A Dash of Pineapple
by agent000
Summary: Jack thought that two years had been enough time to learn who he was as a Guardian, but when he finds himself trapped in a magical land with only a skeptic and a child to keep him company and a being named Chaos bent on his destruction, he realizes he has to get to know himself all over again or die trying. Cover art by knight-jamie on Tumblr.
1. Into the Labyrinth

_**Okay, I don't know where this idea came from, or where I'm going with it, but I decided to post it anyway and see what you guys think. It's an experimental fic, so let me know if you like this idea or not.**_

_**Disclaimer: I cannot claim to own the loveable winter sprite, the movie he was in, or any of his buddies who appeared in the movie, though I suppose I can claim my OCs. Meh, I want to own the loveable winter sprite though. *snickers* If only.**_

Has anyone ever thought about how bizarre it is to read a story told in the first person? It presumes that the storyteller has lived through whatever perils and dramas they tell, and that they are now able to speak of it from their point of safety.

It assumes that they are alive and well and unharmed. It assumes that the person was real. That the experience was real.

But what if this is not the case?

Enter myself, a crazy winter sprite with a penchant for adventure, and a knowledge that all problems in life can be resolved through fun. At least, that's what I think most of the time. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. This is that story.

I would start this story with an, "It all started when..." statement, but to be quite honest, I don't really know when it started. I only knew when I was in the middle of it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's back up.

Pitch had been out of commission for a couple years, and I was getting more accustomed to my role as a Guardian. I still didn't entirely fit in, but we were all working on it.

Then there was that altercation I had with Bunny after a mission that we had messed up together after trying to conquer some rogue nightmares.

"Mate, you've gotta stop being so frivolous all the time!"

I swaggered around, swinging my staff in a showoffy way. "Yeah, well, maybe if you weren't so serious, things wouldn't get this out of hand."

Bunny longsufferingly rubbed at his eyes and said, "Oi, Frostbite, I just wish you could have some way of seeing how much fun is too much."

He should have really been careful what he wished for.

I was flying around one day shortly after that when I saw something that grabbed my attention. It embarrasses me to say that I can't remember exactly what it was. Most of my memories from just before everything happened are a bit fuzzy. That is as he wished it.

As soon as I touched down to investigate the anomaly, reality bent around me. The ground rose up around me and caged me in, and I promptly passed out.

When I awoke, I was spread out on an operating table of sorts, my wrists and ankles cuffed into place to prevent escape, and no one in sight. The anomaly I'd seen had obviously been a trap, and I had a pretty good idea who was behind it.

"Pitch!" I yelled. "What purpose do you have in locking me up here? Come on out and speak to me like a man!"

The resulting laugh that emanated from every corner of the room sent chills deep into my bones, which is strange when that happens to Jack Frost. That was not Pitch's laugh. This laugh belonged to someone else.

"Why would Pitch bring you here, Jack Frost? Pitch Black wants nothing to do with you!" The laughter escalated again. "I, on the other hand, could use a good laugh. And where better to get it than the Guardian of Fun, eh?" More laughs followed. I wasn't sure if this guy was terrifying or just being stupid. Sure, I'd be happy to make him laugh, but under these circumstances? Not so much.

"Who the hell are you?" I screeched, which only seemed to drive the madman even more insane.

"Oh, you don't know me yet, Jack Frost. But you will. You will. But you must amuse me first."

Despite the evasiveness, his response did answer some of my questions. If I didn't know him yet, but he was powerful enough to capture me, then he had to be a new spirit. Though why the Man in the Moon would create a spirit this psychotic was beyond me. Maybe he'd been turned into a spirit in some other way.

"I'm not in the business of entertaining people who hold me hostage," I said.

"Now don't be ridiculous," said the voice. The wrist and leg cuffs suddenly popped open and released me. The table itself vanished into the floor, and I was whipped into a standing position as my staff came out of nowhere and smacked into place in my hand.

"Your task is very simple," said the voice as he let off another roll of maniacal laughter, "All you have to do is escape."

My grip tightened on my staff. This creature, whoever he was, seemed to be getting more sadistic by the second. If I was supposed to entertain him by escaping, then escaping must be no easy matter.

"Of course, I will play 'fair', said the voice with a note of sarcasm on the word "fair". Something told me that no matter what arrangements were made, none of this would be fair at all. "You will be sorted into a team who will all work to escape my labyrinth."

At this proclamation, the walls in the room I was in fell down and revealed another room that was already occupied by two people: a man, or rather a young adult boy, and a little girl. Why was this guy dragging innocent humans into this mess? He had really gone too far.

"Meet your team," said the voice. "This is the skeptic, the naive one, and the freak."

The voice started laughing again as name tags appeared on the three of us, denoting which of the three demeaning categories he had sorted us into. I knew even before I checked my name tag that I was "the freak". The other two were clearly human. I was the only one who wasn't.

"It will require all three of you combined to escape my labyrinth, so don't let anything happen to each other or you'll never get out alive!" The child started whimpering upon hearing this, and I gripped my staff even tighter in irritation. I felt no belief coming from either of the two humans, so I had no idea what I could do to help. How dare he terrorize a little girl like that?

"Good luck, my friends, and have fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!" I felt sick to my stomach. This was supposed to be fun? To who?

The walls then fell down around us and disintegrated into nothingness, and the three of us found ourselves standing on the edge of a canyon, overlooking a vast valley of green and purple grasses beneath a crimson sky. As bizarre as it was, it took my breath away due to its strange beauty. "Wow..."

The other two snapped around to look at me, which made me stagger back. They could see me despite not believing? How was that possible? What had the crazy guy done?

"So, you're the 'freak', I take it," said the guy in my team, gesturing to my name tag. "Why so entranced? Are you on his side or something?"

The paranoia threw me for a loop, and I waved my hand and shook my head. "No. N-N-NO! I was captured just like you guys."

"Then why did you 'wow' at what he did?"

"It's pretty, okay?" I shot back. "I've had to learn to see the good even in bad situations in order to do my job, so deal with it!" The guy crossed his arms and turned away from me, miffed. I felt bad for yelling. We were all just scared.

"Sorry," I said, and I took off my demeaning name tag. "I've spent most of my life alone. I'm not used to working with others."

"That makes two of us," said the guy.

A whimper from the little girl snapped us out of the fit we were in and we directed our attention at her. "Can I go home now?"

All my irritation flooded out of me and I ran over and knelt in front of the girl, putting my arms around her protectively. "We have to get out of here first," I said, "but we'll make sure to keep you safe." I turned to the other guy and gave him a meaningful look. "Won't we?"

The guy shrugged and said, "Yeah, sure," but he didn't seem so sure. I stared at him sadly. The poor guy really didn't have much hope of getting out of he was acting like this. I took a deep breath and then stood up, my resolve renewed. It was time to act like the Guardian I was.

"Okay," I said, "if whoever he was said that we can't get out of here without working together, then that must mean that each of us has different abilities that we have to pool together. So we're going to have to get to know each other if we have any hope of getting out of here."

"Right," said the guy, wearing a deadpan face. I'd hoped to get more of a reaction than that. Whatever. I sighed and tried again.

"How about we start with our names? I'm Jack."

"Brent," said the guy. At least he was trying to cooperate.

I knelt down to the little girl's level and placed my arm around her shoulders. "And what's your name, sweetheart?"

"Amanda."

"Amanda," I repeated. "That's a pretty name." The little girl smiled at me, and I smiled back, then stood up to get back to business.

"Okay," I said, "I can guess that he called Amanda 'the naive one' because she's so young, but I'm a little afraid to ask why you're called 'the skeptic'."

Brent rolled his eyes. "It's because I value logic and reason over anything else, obviously." He sighed. "I'm a computer programmer. It's just what I do." He paused a bit as he eyed the spot where my demeaning name tag used to be before he said, "I suppose his nickname for you was making fun of your hair."

I choked on a laugh that escaped unexpectedly at the comment. This Brent dude was naive enough to assume the term 'freak' was merely being applied to white hair? And here Amanda was called naive.

"Eh heh," I said as I rubbed the back of my head. "Not exactly. But I don't think you're going to like the reason, Brent."

"Why not?" said Brent.

But I didn't get a chance to answer, because what looked like a giant albatross swooped past us, nearly knocking us off our perch. Having missed its target, it turned and prepared to have a second go at us. We had to get off the ledge, and fast, but it was a fifty foot drop to the ground.

"I think you're about to find out why, Brent," I said. I started barking orders. "Brent, Amanda, grab hold of me as tight as you can, and don't let go!"

"What are you doing?" said Brent while Amanda hurried to obey.

"No time to explain. Just trust me, please! I know what I'm doing."

Having no alternative, Brent came and clung to me as well, and I leapt over the edge of the cliff seconds before the albatross arrived at the place where we had been. Both people screamed immediately as we fell, but I did my best to tune it out for the time being as falling most of the way was key to getting away from the ginormous bird as fast as possible.

Just before impact, I stopped and slowed our descent to a gentle downward float until the three of us made contact with the ground.

As soon as we were stable once again, Amanda squeaked with joy, let go, and started bounding around, pleased with herself. Brent, on the other hand, stared at me with a terror-stricken expression on his face, shouted "FREEEEEEEEEEEAAAK!" and took off running in the first direction he could think of to get away from me.

My team was now down to two, and we'd only just gotten started.

* * *

Whoever it was who had trapped us here and stuck us together was right about one thing: we absolutely needed to work together in order to survive. But I didn't know what to do if someone ran in terror to get away from me. I wondered if it was kinder to just let him make the choice to bail out on us than to force him to stick it out with someone he feared.

Thankfully, I had Amanda to slap some sense into me. She tugged at my shirt, and I looked down at her. "Yes?"

"Isn't it bad for him to run away from us?"

"Um," I said, rubbing my neck. "Yeah, I suppose it is."

She didn't miss a beat. "Then you have go catch him and tell him that he's naughty."

Despite the situation, I chuckled at that and knelt down to her level. "Snowflake, he's not trying to be naughty. He's just scared of me because I have magic powers."

She wouldn't hear it. "Uh hun, he is too naughty. We were told to work together or we'd die, and he won't do it. So he's naughty." Then she shook her finger at me. "And you're naughty too, because you're letting him get away!"

I rolled my eyes and smiled. There was no getting around her little kid logic. She was right.

"Alright," I said as I hoisted her up onto my hip. "Let's go get the naughty boy before he gets himself into too much trouble."

"Yeah!" said Amanda.

I launched into the air with new purpose, having benefitted from the motivational speaking skills only a young child could give. I scanned the ground in the direction he'd run, but there was no sign of him. Had I lost him?

Upon closer inspection, I noticed a large hole in the ground, and it seemed to be shrinking by the second. I had a gut-wrenching feeling about that hole. "Oh, no." I dove straight toward the hole, shouting Brent's name.

"Go away! Don't touch me!" Brent's voice shouted from the hole. I wanted to stand there and just talk to him until he decided to stop fearing me, but the hole was still shrinking. In a few minutes, he'd be swallowed up for good, and there would be no way I could reach him. It was now or never.

I placed Amanda on the ground and told her to wait there, then dove straight into the hole. It didn't take long to find Brent at the bottom of the pit, recoiling in fear both from the sight of me and from the ever-shrinking hole. I wasn't sure which fear was worse for him at the moment.

I reached out my hand toward Brent. "Please, take my hand. I'll get you out of here."

"Go away!" shouted Brent. I recoiled a bit from the venom in his voice, but little Amanda's pep talk was still ringing in my ears. I refused to be the naughty one. This time, at least.

"Brent, please," I said, "if you stay here, you'll die for sure. If you let me save you, you'll at least have a chance of living." I looked up at the opening of the pit. Another couple minutes, and even I wouldn't be able to squeeze out. We had to leave now.

"Brent," I said, "I understand you're terrified of the unknown. I'm sorry that I happen go be one of those unknowns. I'll happily tell you everything you want to know about me once we get to the surface, but we have to leave now or we're both going to die here!"

Brent thought for a moment, then shakily reached out and took my hand. I wasted no time in shooting up to the surface as fast as my magic would carry me. We broke through to open air just as the hole closed behind us, and I heard Amanda cheering from the ground. We were all safe. For now.

I caught my breath in the air before shifting my energy to lower us back to the ground. Before our feet had even touched the ground, Amanda ran up and grabbed Brent's arm and started shaking it in time with her words.

"Bad Brent! You ran away! Naughty, naughty Brent!"

Brent looked up at me with a question on his face, and I merely shrugged and chuckled. Little kids had a way with me.

Brent reached out and patted Amanda's head. "Sorry, kid."

Amanda nodded firmly with her hands on her hips, then shook her finger at Brent. "Okay... but don't do it again."

"Noted," said Brent, who then took on a serious expression as he turned toward me. "And I think you have some 'splainin' to do."

I moved my arms out in an open gesture. "What do you want to know?" I knew better than to just rattle stuff off about me in front of a skeptic. He was already scared enough as it was. It was best to let him ask the questions.

"First of all," he said, "how do you do that flying trick? And don't say-"

Before he finished his sentence, I held up my staff and said, "Magic."

"-magic," he finished. He blinked as he realized what I said, then added, "I told you not to say that."

I leaned on my staff, slightly amused. "Why not? It's true." I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten to talk with a skeptic about magic. I was going to cherish every second of this conversation and remember it for when I needed a laugh later.

"No, it's not," he said, "because magic isn't real."

I rolled my eyes and sighed. "Brent, you're trapped in a magical world. Yet somehow you can accept all this... this chaos around you, yet you can't accept a man who flies?"

"There's a perfectly rational explanation for all of this," he said. "I just haven't figured it out yet. For all I know, this might all be one big hallucination of mine."

Another eye roll from me. "Well then, sir Brent, if we're all just part of your hallucination, why don't you just go with it rather than fighting it the whole way?"

He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it before he spoke, then opened his mouth again and said, "You do have a valid point."

"Of course I do," I said. "I've been rehearsing for ages on what to say when I encounter a skeptic. After thinking on it for that long, it had better be sound advice."

"Okay, fair enough," said Brent, "but if I'm going to just go with it, I need to know what to expect from you. What else can you do besides flying?"

"Hmm..." I thought for a moment before answering that. For some reason, I wanted to be funny. I had no idea why that was so important to me, but it was. "I'd say, mostly freezing things and driving people into hysterics."

Brent gave me a double-take. "What?"

I laughed at the look on his face. This was just too perfect. "Watch," I said, and I slammed my staff on the ground. "Freezing things..." Ice spread out from my staff to cover the soil for several feet all around. Brent got startled and jumped back. "...and sending people into hysterics!" I conjured up a snowflake, infused it with my spirit, and then blew it at Amanda who promptly collapsed into a fit of giggles.

Brent crossed his arms while staring at the scene, then turned back to face me. "Fat lot of good that's gonna do. We can just giggle our enemies to death."

I held my hands up in surrender. "Hey, this is your hallucination. Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you to laugh more."

"Either that, or it's warning me that laughing buffoons like you will be the death of me."

I lost control of my emotions at that point and fell to the ground, laughing so hard my eyes stung. "Laughing buffoons? That's a good one! I've never been called a laughing buffoon before. Go ahead, call me that again. Do it, do it!"

Brent rolled his eyes and said, "Let's go," but it took several minutes before Amanda or myself were able to stand up again, our laughter was so intense. Brent was not amused.

But a low rumble like a distant laugh came over the valley, and I think that watching us from some safe place, someone else was laughing too.

_**So, what do you guys think? Do you want me to continue this fic? Please tell me if you do. Also, feel free to tell me where you think it's going or where you want it to go, if you have any ideas. It might help me to figure out where I'M going, haha! If you have no ideas though, that's fine. I just need to know how much interest there is in this story.**_

_**Anyway, thanks for reading, and maybe I'll see you next time...? *waves shyly***_


	2. Am I dead?

_**I'm surprised how little attention this story's gotten thus far. I'm guessing it's the OCs. Oh well, my partner loved this story, and he's my most important reader, so I'll update for him if no one else.**_

_**If it helps any though, there will be no pairings in this fanfic. ;)**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own ROTG, only my OCs, and even they're trying to argue the issue.**_

As much as it pained me to admit it, I almost wanted to believe Brent's theory that this whole ordeal was all just a big hallucination of ours. I wasn't accustomed to the idea of hallucinations, being that just about everything you experience in the fae realm is real no matter how bizarre. And I couldn't fathom how we would have all wound up stuck in the same delusion. But this experience being a hallucination meant that we would all wake up from this eventually. For the first time in my life, I understood the comfort that came with being a skeptic.

The three of us stood on the plain, staring out on an endless desert in all directions. A few minutes prior, we'd been met with lush, rolling hills, and now there was nothing but barren land that was so dry that the soil cracked from there to the horizon.

We now had two suns in the sky for some reason, one purple and one green, and together they emitted more heat than I thought was possible for this kind of place. Granted, I usually avoid deserts during the daytime as it is, but I was pretty sure that this was even hotter than the average desert.

Sweat beaded up on my brow and started rolling down my face. I wiped it off with my sleeve and then pulled up my hood to protect my head, but it didn't help much. I wasn't ever supposed to sweat, being the spirit of winter. Sweat meant that I was starting to melt.

"We have to get to shelter," I said, my breathing starting to become ragged.

"But there is no shelter for miles!" said Brent, and he gestured around us at everything we could see. "For all we know, there might be no shelter anywhere in this world."

He was absolutely right in that possibility, but just being logical wasn't going to save me. "But I can't take this heat."

Amanda jumped up and down like an eager little thing. "Make it snow! Make it snow!"

I shook my head, wiping more sweat off my brow. "I-I can't. Too hot..." The heat finally got to me beyond what I could bear, and I fainted.

The logical next scene for this story to have is wherever I happen to wake up, but as this story is not a logical one to begin with, that is not the next scene in the story.

As soon as my body collapsed, I felt something tear at my being, and I found myself still standing up while looking down at my unconscious body on the ground.

Amanda screamed, but I was too shell shocked to figure out what had happened for several minutes. It was only when Brent plopped down beside my body and started slapping my cheek while shouting, "Jack! Jack! Wake up!" that the gravity of the situation hit me.

Was I dead? I was supposedly immortal, so how could I just suddenly be dead? I waved my hands in front of Amanda and Brent, and tried to poke, kick, and punch to get attention. But nothing worked.

Suddenly, the sinister voice from the operating room was in my head. "You are not dead yet, Jack, but you will be if your friends don't get you to safety in time."

"But where can we find shelter? And how can I tell them what to do in this form?"

The voice just laughed once again. "Well now, isn't that up to you three to figure out?"

My hands clenched into fists, and I desperately wanted to hit the guy, but I couldn't figure out where he was, as his voice emanated from all around me.

"I am closer than you might think, Jack. You may hit me if you wish, but I don't believe you'll be satisfied with the results." Again came the laughter.

I took a rigid stance and turned around several times in an attempt to locate the source of the voice, but I came up with nothing.

"Who the hell are you?" I said. "And why do you insist on tormenting us?"

"Oh, precious little Jack Frost. Spoilers." It almost sounded like the guy was shaking his finger in a reprimanding way. "You will understand everything in time... if you survive."

I threw my arms out in a desperate gesture. "Can't you just tell me something? Anything?"

"Well now," said the voice, "It would be helpful for you to know your enemy, wouldn't it?" He chuckled again, and I gritted my teeth, knowing that he wasn't actually going to tell me who he was if he hadn't done so already.

"Look around," said the voice. "Have you not already referred to my lovely labyrinth as a world of chaos? I am the spirit of this world. I exist in everything and through everything. I am Chaos."

The tension in my fists gradually fizzled out as I processed what this being had said. While he had made it quite clear that he would not reveal his identity to me, he still gave me his name. Why? What was he trying to get at? Was this some sort of trick?

"Assume everything is a trick from now on, Jack Frost." The being called Chaos then allowed his laugh to ricochet through my mind.

I grabbed the sides of my head and clamped my eyes shut tightly. "Get out of my head!" The laughter escalated again, but then faded to an imperceptible level. I then opened my eyes to see Amanda and Brent still puzzling over what to do with me.

"At my house," said Amanda, "whenever it gets too hot upstairs, my mommy just tells me to go downstairs, and it's not so hot anymore. Why don't we just go downstairs?"

"We're not in a building, Amanda," said Brent. "There is no downstairs."

"Uh huh! There's always a downstairs. And it's colder down there!"

As tempting as it was to ignore Amanda's naive little rant, I realized that Chaos had set the three of us up for a reason. Maybe she was onto something. If we were to go downstairs of where we were right now, we'd be underground.

My eyebrows shot up right then, and I cackled in surprise. Why hadn't I thought of that? The little girl was a genius!

"Brent, get me underground!" I shouted. "It'll be cold enough down there to save my life. Hurry!"

Of course, Brent couldn't hear me, but something seemed to switch on in Amanda's brain. "I think Jack wants to go under the ground."

The light went on in Brent's eyes, and he pulled Amanda into a hug. "You're brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" He then looked around the landscape. "Now what can we use to dig a hole?"

"Why don't we just take the elevator?" said Amanda. Brent and I turned around to see where she pointed, and sure enough, there was now an elevator there where there wasn't one before.

Brent hesitated for a few seconds, likely uncertain about the safety of an elevator that just spontaneously appears in the midst of a desert. Not that I could blame him. That wasn't logical enough even for me, but it wasn't like staying in place in this strange land was any safer.

It seemed Brent came to the same conclusion, and so he hefted me up and threw my body over his shoulder, then the three of us bolted for the elevator. Amanda hit the down button, and the elevator shot down at rocket speed, sending us flying once it hit ground level.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, Brent raced out into the open to find a cool place to lay my body so I could recover. What he ended up settling on was a little spot next to a fountain filled with multiple streams of water, each enchanted by a different color of light. At first glance, it looked similar to fountains I'd seen in the past, but upon closer inspection I saw that the light in each stream of water was really part of that stream. And as the individual streams fell into the basin below, the lights began to lose their individuality as they danced and merged with other blobs of color, creating new colors entirely.

"Huh, water colors." I shook my head, unable to help but be amused at the sight, even in a dire situation like this.

Brent tore a scrap of fabric off of his jeans, dipped it into the light water, then dabbed it on my head to cool my body down. "Come on, wake up, bud. We can't do this without you." He dipped the cloth again and continued to dab it all over my body.

Suddenly, all the water he'd dabbed onto my body frosted over, which was a good sign because it meant I wasn't dead yet, and I felt myself get grabbed by an invisible force and then get slammed down onto my body.

That had hurt, and now I had such a headache. I wanted to rub at my head, but all my joints were stiff and could barely move. I groaned.

"He's coming to!" said Brent. "Amanda, he's waking up."

"Yeah!" said Amanda, and I could hear her little feet jumping up and down on the stone floor. It was good to be wanted.

After a few minutes of struggling, I finally managed to open my eyes. Everything was a blur, which seemed almost surreal to me considering how crystal clear everything had been while I was still outside of my body.

"Jack!" said Brent. "Are you okay? How many fingers am I holding up?"

I had to concentrate really hard in order to make anything out, but after a few minutes, my world finally came back into focus.

"Three," I said.

Brent breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh thank God. I thought we'd lost you. But you'll be okay now. Just rest."

I was slightly amused at the idea of the skeptic being able to thank God for my survival when he could barely even accept my existence, but I decided not to poke at that. I tried to leave people's religious matters alone. I could still poke at something else though.

"Why do you care so much when I'm just a hallucination to you, huh?"

Brent was flustered, and his erratic body language showed it. "Well, I-that guy just said that I couldn't get out of here without you. That's all."

"Uh huh." I smirked, knowing he was lying, but it seemed little ol' Brent still wanted everyone to think he was tough. I turned to Amanda and I whispered to her that she should tickle the old stick-in-the-mud, a suggestion she wholeheartedly agreed with.

"No... No... NO!" Brent tried to scramble away from Amanda's tickles, but doing so only caused the two of them to topple headlong into the light water. They were both going to be glowing for days at this rate, and I laughed at the thought.

By and by, I was able to sit up again, and I looked around for my staff, but it was nowhere to be seen. "Hey, Brent?" I said, "What happened to my staff?"

"Your-Your staff?" he said, and he scanned the underground room we were in, as though doing so would help unlock his memory.

Then he smacked his face, a gesture I didn't think would mean anything good. "I left it on the surface. I was so frantic to get you down here that I just... forgot."

I pulled my hood tight around my face and did my best to suppress a scream. I couldn't go back up to the surface and face that kind of heat exposure a second time. "But I need that staff! I can't fly without it! And it's harder to control my ice if I don't have it."

Brent's mouth shaped itself into a silent "O", and he quickly said, "but, it's no big deal. I could just run back up to the surface and grab your staff for you and..."

He stopped speaking as I pointed my finger at something. He followed with his gaze to see what I was pointing at, only to say, "Oh."

The elevator had disappeared.

_**Shorter chapter than I usually do, but I liked where it ended, so meh. Hopefully someone out there liked this. *chuckles* I'll get back to working on Lullabies in the Frost and Imaginary Hellos very soon. Trying to juggle three fanfics at once. Haven't done that in a while.**_

_**Anyway, if you're reading this, thank you. A review would be awesome if you're up to it. :) Either way, see you next time!**_


	3. Shall We Dance?

_**Hey, peeps! Sorry this took a while to write. First my computer died, then my tablet died, so now I have to either get to a library or steal my dad's computer. Eh heh... fun stuff, fun stuff. I'll try to update more often though if I can. ;) Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter.**_

_**Disclaimer: Don't own nuttin'.**_

I was worthless without my staff. That was no secret, and I'm pretty sure everybody knew it. My freezing powers or ability to imbue others with the spirit of fun hadn't come into play yet, and I wasn't sure if they ever would. I was only useful for my magic, and without my ability to fly, I was afraid I wasn't even useful for that.

"Well, I guess we'd better just get going," said Brent. "If the pattern holds up as it has been, we'll be punished if we stay in one place for too long. I guess we're too boring for that guy when we're not moving." None of us disagreed with his conclusion. It did seem to be the case.

The underground cavern ahead of us seemed to be quite dark, and the only light source as far as I could see was the light water in the fountain. Amanda and Brent had played in it, and so it had soaked into their clothes. They now glowed with it, enough to light up their footsteps. That was good for them, but it didn't really help me much.

While Brent had dabbed some of the light water on me to wake me up, as soon as it froze, it began to crumble off. That would never work for me.

I wasn't completely helpless, however, as I thrust my hands into the fountain and began to freeze some of the light water into the shape of a ball so I could carry it. I lifted the finished product triumphantly out of the fountain and balanced it in my hand, smirking proudly as I did so. It glowed its ethereal glow in the same way that Brent's and Amanda's skin now glowed, enough to light my footsteps. I wouldn't be completely dependent on them.

As soon as I was ready, we began to walk down a dark tunnel, me holding my frozen orb over my head in order to give everyone a little more light. My light may not have been as convenient as theirs, but at least it was easier to control.

"So, something strange happened to me while I was knocked out," I said, which immediately garnered the other two's attention. "I was still conscious of everything around me, but I was standing outside of my own body like I was dead. And the one who trapped us here spoke to me."

"What did he say?" said Brent.

My eyebrows knitted together, but the memories from my out-of-body experience were already getting fuzzy. It was a good thing I was talking about the experience now, because I could forget it soon. "Not much," I said. "He was mostly heckling me. I guess that's not too surprising."

Brent rolled his eyes. "Not surprising at all, coming from that creep."

I felt a pang of guilt, though I didn't know why it was there, so I brushed it off. "He called himself Chaos," I said.

"Someone thinks he's all high and mighty with a name like that," said Brent.

"Maybe…" I said, uncomfortable with the situation, but I didn't know why.

For the most part, there was really nothing to see in our underground tunnel. A rock here and a bulge there. Fascinating material for spelunkers I supposed, but none of us seemed the types who would normally be exploring through caves like this, and for the most part, we were just bored and scared. Which I suppose was the one fascinating thing about the situation, feeling both of those emotions at once.

However, the boringness of the situation had to come to an end at some point. Even a normal cave would have either ended or opened up into a cavern, but there was nothing normal about this cave or anything else in this land of Chaos. We just couldn't tell what was unusual about it yet, but our guards were constantly up, just in case.

When we saw the glow in the distance, we simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief at having the boredom end, and grew apprehensive at what we would be experiencing next. Some of the things we had already experienced had been hell. Would this be one of those things too, or would it just be weird? I was okay with ordinary weirdness. I lived it every day.

Upon coming close to the glow, I let out a chuckle at the unexpected sight. "Are we expected to dance?" I said. Brent shrugged, but he had raised an eyebrow at the sight, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

Stretched out before us lay a floor full of tiles all of a different color, neon light backlighting each of them, casting an unearthly glow on the cave walls. Now if only a disco ball were to drop down from somewhere, the illusion would be complete. I was tempted to yell at Chaos for forgetting something, but then seeing the look on Brent's face, I held my tongue. No need to make the guy more upset than he probably already was.

Each tile was about as big as Amanda, which was a bit larger of a scale than a normal dance floor, but that didn't surprise me much. Chaos had to do something different than the norm, right? I shrugged and sauntered forward, all prepared for lights and music to spring up out of nowhere as soon as I stepped out onto the floor, when just as I tried to step on the first tile, the tile uprooted itself and rushed up to block my way. I smacked into it and then fell down onto my back. That certainly hadn't been what I'd expected. I rubbed my nose while I cursed Chaos under my breath.

Brent raised an eyebrow at the observation of my little experience, and he cautiously approached the board, walking slower than I had done so as to observe what would happen without getting hit. Sure enough, as soon as he was about to step on the first tile, it flew up and blocked his path. Since he had moved slower, he was able to pull back without getting hit. Darn him for making me look so stupid.

"Amanda," said Brent, "See if you can step onto the board, but go slowly." She nodded and slowly walked up to the board, but the tile flew up in her face too. It seemed we were stuck.

"How are we supposed to get around this thing?" I growled and pulled myself to my feet. This wasn't fun anymore. This was just annoying.

Brent turned toward me and looked as though he was trying to process something. "Hmm…" he said, "Can you fly at all, Jack?"

I shook my head. "Not without my staff."

Brent sighed and rolled his eyes. "Which I'm sure is what Mr. Chaos was counting on." He turned back to face me. "How high can you jump?"

"Um…" I looked down at my feet and chuckled awkwardly, not really knowing the answer to that myself. I hadn't tried to jump without my staff since becoming Jack Frost, as the question had never come up. But I knew that my running speed was faster than any mortal could run, and I didn't use magic for that. I was just built better. Maybe jumping worked the same way. "I'll find out," I said.

I ran up to the board again, and just before I stepped onto it, I jumped upward instead of trying to take a step forward, which again launched the tile up after me. I indeed could jump much higher than the average mortal could jump, even without magic, but the tile was fully prepared for this, and it launched itself up to meet me at my level. Great. It seemed that even if I had been able to fly at the moment, it wouldn't have done a lick of good.

"Hmmm…" said Brent after seeing this, and he stroked his chin in thought. "If we can't merely walk over it, and you can't fly or jump over it, then we must be expected to think our way through it. This must be a gigantic puzzle."

I raised my eyebrows at this, that thought not quite registering in my head. "A puzzle?"

"Yes," said Brent. "I think we're supposed to target certain tiles in certain ways, or at certain times. I'm not exactly sure of the pattern yet, but I think I can work it out if given time."

This was the first time that Chaos had pulled a feat of logic out of his bag of tricks, and I was suddenly so grateful to have Brent on my team. We weren't in any immediate danger as far as I knew, but the last thing I wanted was to be stuck underground forever, being hemmed in by a bunch of self-launching, glowy tiles. I raised my hands in surrender and stepped back from the floor. "Please, take all the time you need. Work your magic."

Brent seemed amused at my choice of wording, and he nodded as he stepped up to the floor and began studying the pattern to the best of his ability, then he walked up to each and every tile he could reach to see if all of them reacted in the same way. As it turned out, one tile, a blue one, did not leap up when he approached it. It seemed he was on the right track.

He stepped onto the blue tile and then turned toward the adjacent tile on his right, only to have that one leap up at him like all the others had. He turned to face the next tile, only to have the same thing happen. In fact, none of the tiles he was next to would allow him passage off of it, which seemed to make a mockery of his puzzle theory. Maybe this was only an act of Chaos without any rhyme or reason to it.

"Jack, come here," said Brent. I shook my head to snap myself out of my daze, and then I walked over toward him to see what he wanted. Brent stepped off the blue tile, and then he commanded me to step onto the blue tile instead. I couldn't see what good that would do, but what harm would it do? I shrugged and stepped onto it.

"Good," he said, "Now don't step off of that tile until I tell you to, okay?"

I smiled nervously at the way he'd worded that, but I agreed.

Brent then walked away and rechecked all the tiles he had checked before, trying to find a loophole in one of them. This time, he found that one more tile refused to jump up and block him. A pink one this time. It seemed that so long as I stood on this tile, that other tile would stay down too. Interesting. Maybe his puzzle theory was correct.

"Amanda." He gestured for her to come to him, and he pointed to the tile and ordered her to stand on it like I was doing and to stay put until he said otherwise. Since I was already following Brent's orders, she decided that it was worth listening to him on this issue, even though I could tell that she wished I was doing something fun with her instead. Fun would just have to come later.

Finally, Brent ran around the exposed tiles again and found a purple tile that stayed down for him, and all three of us were finally on the floor. Phew! But there was still a long way to go, and it seemed like it was going to be a large effort for us to get all the way across if we were going to have to figure out each and every tile we could step on by trial and error.

Brent held up his index finger to get our attention before doing anything else. "Okay, I have several theories as to what kind of puzzle we're looking at here, but I need to do a few more experiments to be sure of the pattern." He pointed to me. "Jack, you were the first tile to lie flat, so I want you to see if one of your adjacent tiles will let you move onto it."

"Okay," I said, and I turned toward the nearest tile, which flew up in my face as the tiles before. Then I turned to the next tile, with the same results. I tried each one around me without any luck.

"Alright," said Brent, "So we are not going in order of persons." He turned to face Amanda. "You have a blue tile in front of you, which was the first color we were able to get to let us on. See if that one stays down for you." She tried approaching that tile, but it flew up in her face. It seemed the pattern wasn't one of color order either.

"Hmmm…" Brent rubbed his chin as he stared out at the tiles before him, trying to sort out the pattern. "We started with blue on the left, then pink on the right, and then purple in the middle. Blue plus pink makes purple." He looked back up at where Amanda and I were from him, respectively. "Jack is two squares away from me, and Amanda is three. Jack's color may have a stronger affect on my next move than Amanda's color does because of the proximity."

I didn't entirely know what he had just said, but it sounded like brilliance, whatever it was.

"What does that mean?" I shouted over to him.

He smirked back at me, the first time I'd seen him do so since we'd come here. "It means it's time for me to shine." Then without any further warning, he took a flying leap off of his purple square and he landed on another one, which didn't fly up at him. A green tile.

My mind was blown that he had figured out where to go next without trying each and every tile before making a decision on where to go. And he had been absolutely right. "How did you do that?" I said. Now this, this was magic. The stuff I did was just parlor tricks.

He threw his arms out to his sides in what was perhaps an overly confident gesture, but I laughed. At least he was finally starting to have fun. "Elementary, my dear Jackson." This only made me laugh again as he continued to explain. "My color was the merging of your color plus Amanda's, indicating an implied movement toward me. Therefore, I only had to notice that your color would have a stronger effect on my next move than Amanda's, which led me to green. It is composed of your color plus another color, but Amanda's color has been cast aside for now."

Yep, I was right. Brilliance. I had no words for this, so I just raised my hands and silently applauded. I wished I was smart enough to figure out something like this. Brent smiled and bowed proudly at me and Amanda, and I suspected that this was just a parlor trick to him. He could do much more complicated puzzles than this, but it was the first test Chaos had given him.

"Okay!" said Brent, and he turned and pointed to Amanda. "You have a yellow tile catty-corner to you. Step on that one now, please."

"Kay!" said Amanda, and she stepped onto the yellow tile without a fuss, the tile staying down according to Brent's bidding. This guy was good. Now I hoped that I would be able to move soon. I really wanted to get across this board as quickly as possible.

Brent turned back to face me, looked at my situation, and then frowned. I supposed the problem was largely due to the fact that he couldn't just tell me to step on another blue tile so that his green one made sense since I had no blue tiles near me. He turned around to look at what tiles were ahead of him and looked back and forth between his tile area and mine several times. Then he cleared his throat and turned back to me. "Jack, I want you to step onto the red tile."

"Red?!" I said. "Seriously? How did you ever reach that conclusion? No one is standing on anything remotely red."

"Jack, trust me. You're the one with the freaky magic, not the logic. Let me solve the puzzle." I huffed, not really wanting to step onto a tile only to get smacked, but I knew he was right. He was really the only one with the knowledge to solve a puzzle like this, and like it or not, whether he was wrong or right about his guess, I was just going to have to trust him. So, after taking a breath and holding it, I headed toward the red tile, and then stepped on it.

It didn't move. I let my breath out. Brent knew what he was doing. I didn't know how, but he really knew what he was doing. "Sorry, you were right," I said sheepishly. Brent either didn't notice or didn't care, as he turned around and then stepped onto a new tile of his own. And orange one. I smacked my face as the realization of the logic sunk in. Orange was yellow plus red. Somehow he'd figured out that he was going to have to step onto an orange tile. No wonder I had to change colors.

We continued in this way with turn after turn, Brent calling out a tile for one of us to step on and us obeying him, and then him stepping on a tile for himself, then doing it all over again. When we finally had the last person step off of the last tile (it was me), we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Well, except for Amanda. She was jumping up and down, begging to go play on the pretty floor again. I laughed in amusement and shook my head. There was no way I was going back there and getting myself stuck.

Our next surprise occurred when we had walked away from the dance floor thing for a few minutes and found that light shone down on us from somewhere above, and we all looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling, which led outside. It would work great for getting us out of here, if only I had my…

Suddenly a familiar feeling materialized in my hand, and I looked down and gasped. My staff was back for seemingly no reason. I couldn't fathom why Chaos had willingly given it back when he'd had every opportunity to keep it from me and just torture me with my inability to fly, but for the time being, I was grateful.

"Well, since I apparently can fly again," I held my staff up in front of Brent, who gasped at the sight as well, "I'm going to fly up and check out that hole to see where we would end up." Brent nodded, and I launched myself up into the air, amazed at how grateful I was to be flying again, even though I had only been out of commission for a few hours.

My head popped up through the hole, and my eyes widened at the sudden change in scenery. It wasn't the lush hills that we had encountered when we first entered this labyrinth, nor was it the weird desert with the two alien suns. This was a lush jungle with so many plants that the sun didn't shine directly anywhere without being filtered through countless leaves before hitting the person's skin. Every few feet, there was a trickle of a waterfall cascading down from some rock wall. Birds flew by and animals cackled. I'd never seen a jungle in this much detail before, being that I couldn't stand the heat, but my heart skipped a beat at the sight of this place. It was beautiful beyond words.

I was briefly afraid of the temperature I would have to face, when I realized that my head wasn't getting overheated from peeking out into this new world. Just to make sure, I raised my hand to fully expose it to the air outside the underground cave. It didn't get overheated either. I guessed that Chaos had tweaked the temperature of this jungle so I wouldn't suffer. The next challenge he had for us must not involve me passing out. At least, not from heat exhaustion.

I flew back down and landed before the other two. "It's a jungle out there," I said. Then, realizing I had just made it sound like there was complete and utter chaos running around outside, I corrected myself. "No, I mean, really. It's a jungle. The next world is a weird jungle thing."

"We get to be tigers!" said Amanda, and she proceeded to start growling and stalking around like a tiger.

Brent raised an eyebrow. "But won't you overheat again? I don't know if Chaos will let us come back here if that happens."

"I'll be fine," I said. "For some reason, it's not very hot out there."

Brent rolled his eyes, not really liking the illogic of that statement, but he took it in stride. I guessed that a mild-temperatured jungle was a lot less to deal with than a lot of the other things he had recently dealt with. "Alright," he said. "Get us up there, fly boy."

I snapped my face toward him. "What?!" Brent just laughed, and so I rolled my eyes and grabbed his arm. "Just for that, you're going first." I jumped into the air, dragging a slightly unwilling Brent behind me, and I shoved him up through the hole, then went back down and grabbed Amanda the baby tiger and flew back up with her.

Amanda squealed with joy as soon as we emerged into the jungle, and I let go of her so she could run around and be happy. That was the most important thing right then, to stay happy. The whole ordeal was going to be hard enough without us losing our spirits too. Amanda was setting a good example for us right then.

"Come on, let's play tigers!" Amanda said, running up and grabbing my arm as she jumped up and down. "Tigers! Tigers! Tigers!"

I snorted and then started laughing. She was just too adorable for me to resist, and I ruffled her hair before I stood up. "You'd better run, because Daddy Tiger is gonna eat you!" She screamed and ran away from me as I chased her and roared. She ducked behind trees and rocks as she tried to get away from Jack the fearsome tiger, but I always found her too quickly for her liking, and she always ran away squealing with laughter.

Brent was having none of it and seemed to think we were just being stupid until Amanda ran up to him and said, "Save me, Mommy!"

"Mommy?!"

I clutched my stomach as I tried to control myself through my laughter, but soon found myself failing and I fell over as laughter took over my body. "Yes, Mommy," I said between spurts of laughter, "Save her from the big, evil, daddy tiger!"

Brent stood up then, and I thought he was going to storm away like he had the last time Amanda and I tried to drag him into having fun. But instead of doing that, he grabbed a large leaf, then walked over to me and shoved it in my face, which effectively covered most of my body. "There, Amanda. You're safe from Jack now."

I flailed and kicked the leaf off of myself, then sat up and pointed decisively at Brent, just daring him to try a stunt like that again, though no words came forth. He looked at my reaction, smirked, and then picked Amanda up and shoved her at me. "You'd better not try anything, Jack. I've got a tiger, and I know how to use it."

"Rawr!" Amanda waved her paw hands, trying to reach me, and I found myself falling victim to laughter again.

"Rawr!" I answered back, and I got to my feet and raised my hands over my head. "I'm gonna get you now!"

As I chased those two over the terrain, I felt the dark cloud from earlier in the day lift from my spirit. It really was possible to find joy in any situation. One sometimes just had to look for it, and somehow these two were providing me with all the joy I needed to stay alive through this dire situation.

I vowed right then and there that even after we got out of here, I would make a special effort to take care of them both for the rest of their lives. Even if they never believed in me, even if they couldn't see me, they would always have Jack Frost looking out for them. It was the very least I could do.

_**Hope you enjoyed that. Anyway, thank you to everyone who has been reading this story. Leave me some reviews if you're so inclined, and I'll update as soon as I can! (By the way, I know where I'm going with this story now, and I'm pretty excited about it. But feel free to suggest chaotic things for them to experience in the meantime. I haven't decided all of those yet.)**_

_**See you next time!**_


	4. It's All Happening Again

_**Funny story about this chapter. I was frantically writing this up while I was at the library when my time ran out, so I just quickly jotted down a couple lines that would have been able to end the chapter if I had no other choice, just in case I wouldn't get another chance, but I had been considering writing another scene for this chapter and was still debating on whether to do that or not.**_

_**Naturally, Jack was all, "Yeah, yeah, write that last scene! Do it! Do it!" So... I wrote the scene. Turns out, before I wrote the scene, the chapter was already over 4k words. With the addition of this last scene, it pushed it up another 4.5k! *headdesk* Jack, what did you make me do?! *laughs* I'd considered breaking it into two chapters since it ended okay just before the last scene, but this computer has strange issues with copy and paste, so I decided to just leave it as it was. **_

_**I'm sure you guys will enjoy the freakishly long chapter anyway. (You'd better! I worked hard on it!*shakes finger*)**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't have one. *snickers* No, I kid. I don't own ROTG. But I think giving disclaimers on Fanfiction is stupid since the point of Fanfiction is that we're writing about things we don't own, so why do we give these? It's not even written in their rules. *rolls eyes* I just don't know. But I'll never stop making fun of the disclaimers.**_

What sorts of wacky adventures we could wind up encountering in a weird sort of jungle that didn't even make me melt was beyond me, but we all knew they were coming, and we knew they were coming soon. The apprehension lingered at the back of my mind and wouldn't let me ignore it, though I consistently attempted to paste a smile over it and pretend there was nothing else underneath. I was the Guardian of Fun. I could have fun no matter what the situation, right?

Then again, maybe I should have checked that last thought with Chaos before thinking it, because I'm not entirely sure he agreed with me.

The first clue that something was amiss occurred when I heard the telltale roar rippling over the foliage, and I closed my eyes and said, "Oh, no." Brent turned to me with fear slowly creeping onto his face, though Amanda seemed completely oblivious to the danger we potentially faced. I supposed a wild animal wasn't really the worst thing I had ever encountered in my life, but that didn't make it any more desirable an opponent. And this time, I had two helpless people to defend while thwarting said wild animal's attacks. I hoped that there was only one.

I stood still, gesturing for the others to do the same, and I watched as the animal slowly walked into the clearing. It was a lion. It figured. What else would we find in a weirdly rigged up jungle other than a lion? "Okay, guys," I said, "Just back up slowly…"

This particular lion didn't seem like he had read the same books I had, and he lunged at the three of us, all the while seeming to grow bigger in size the closer he got to us. Was it just my imagination playing tricks? Or was Chaos honestly messing with our heads again? I could easily believe either one.

I did the only thing I could think of and grabbed the first person I could reach and launched into the air, the lion right on my tail, swiping at my heels. How high could this thing jump? It sure seemed to be able to jump a lot higher than a normal lion.

"You left Amanda down there with that thing!" I blinked and turned to look at the person I held captive in my arm, realizing I had apparently grabbed Brent. I felt horrible for leaving little Amanda down on the ground to struggle all by herself, but what was I to do? I hadn't had time to grab everybody, and I didn't think I could safely fly back and pick her up without getting all of us killed. Maybe I could distract the lion and make it follow us so it left Amanda alone.

"I didn't mean to," I said. "I'm gonna try and lead that thing away from her, okay?"

Brent rolled his eyes, but he nodded anyway. He didn't understand my magic all that well, but he was at least coming to terms with it and pretending he accepted it. That at least made my job a whole lot easier.

I took off at top speed straight upward from where we were, just trying to first get out of range of the crazy kitty's jumps, when my head pounded against something intangible. I heard the crack resound through my whole body, and my vision flooded from the impact.

"What was… that?" said Brent. At least now I knew I wasn't crazy if he'd noticed it too.

"Guh wuh wuh uh…" I replied, though I wasn't sure what I was trying to say. I hoped he understood me, because I hadn't a clue what language I was even speaking at the moment. Probably just the language of "I just hit my head so leave me the hell alone."

Whatever I'd said, Brent seemed to understand well enough, and he reached his hand out to feel the area just above my head where I had smacked myself. His eyes knitted in confusion as he ran his fingers over the area for a couple minutes, then he turned to me. "It's solid. Completely solid, even though it looks like a clear sky. Someone doesn't want you escaping."

Great. And psycho kitty was still on my heels even now, as I had to fly to the side to dodge him. I was already above the trees, but the crazy lion was still able to reach me up here. What kind of mutant cat was this thing that it could jump over trees? And why in the world was there a cap at tree level to prevent me from flying any farther?

I rubbed my forehead and groaned. "How the hell are we supposed to escape this thing if I can't fly away from it? I don't suppose you are secretly a lion tamer?"

Brent snorted at this new notion. "Not on your life, bud." Well, that ruled out my skills and Brent's skills, which only left…

"Amanda!" shouted Brent, waving his arm frantically at the little girl down on the ground. I turned to look at what he was freaking out about. "Get away from that lion! He's a killer!"

My eyes widened as I saw that Brent was absolutely right in freaking out, as Amanda casually walked up to the lion, a little giggle in her step, calling for the kitty to come and play with her. "Amanda!" I called, "No! I'll… I'll come and save you. Hold on!" Of course, that meant I had to figure out what to do with Brent, but I was pretty sure he could handle himself a little better than Amanda could. Maybe I could just ditch him in a tree for the time being?

Before I could make up my mind on what to do, Amanda had run up and hugged the big beast, and as if it had been poked with a pin, the lion deflated until it had shrunk down to the size of a normal house cat. Amanda cooed gleefully over her new pet, rocking it back and forth like it was a baby. I blinked, then blinked, then blinked again. What had just happened? Had I honestly seen what I'd thought I'd seen?

I slowly brought Brent and myself back to ground level, and we approached Amanda and her new kitten with no small amount of apprehension. She ran up to us and proudly showed us her prize, but as soon as I reached out to touch it, it exploded into a full sized raging lion once again, pinning me down beneath its mighty paw. What had I done to cause this?

"Bad kitty!" said Amanda, and she touched the lion again, making it shrink back down to the size of a cat. "You have to stay a kitty and let me pet you and play with you forever and ever and ever." I chuckled nervously and dragged myself to my feet. Whatever magic was going on here, Amanda was an expert at it, and I really had no idea what was going on.

Just when I thought this particular trial was past us, roars came from all around us. Brent and I snapped to attention as one by one, jungle animals of all shapes and sizes stepped into the clearing. One locked eyes with me and came charging at full speed, again growing bigger the closer it got, and I knew I couldn't get away from it, so I closed my eyes and waited until…

It never came. I opened my eyes and saw that Amanda had poofed this little creature too, and she now had two little furry creatures to play with. So, if we approached them without fear, would they go down to that cute and cuddly size? I decided to try.

I picked out an elephant that didn't look too terribly threatening at the moment and sauntered up to it, swallowing my fear and trying to look brave as I reached out to touch it. The instant my hand made contact, the elephant squealed and began growing in size as it stomped toward me. I gripped my staff and flew away as fast as possible, but the elephant was gaining on me. I don't know how it was, but it was. It was a freakish elephant.

It reached out and lashed its trunk around my ankle, dragging me out of flight, and it started slamming me repeatedly against a rock which it found nearby. My staff went flying in some random direction, so that even if I had been able to get out of the elephant's grip, I wouldn't be able to fly away from it now. I felt the skin around my ankle split open from the repeated impact, and I suspected I felt blood rushing out, though I knew it would freeze the instant it made contact with the open air as my powers activated. Still, frozen blood or wet blood, bleeding that much wasn't a good sign, not even for an immortal being.

I wondered whether this sadistic elephant had plans of finishing me off and maybe eating me alive or something, but I never got to figure out the answer to that, as Amanda rushed over and touched the elephant, causing it to shrink down to the size of a mouse. I groaned as it released its hold on my ankle, and I collapsed onto the rock.

I lay like that for several minutes, just recuperating, until I finally dared to open my eyes and see what other dangers lay around me. What met my eyes was a menagerie of cute, little forest animals, not one of them even remotely dangerous or threatening, and half of them clustering near Amanda. My eyes opened wide as I realized what was going on. She had turned each and every one of the threatening jungle animals into its harmless counterpart. All by herself!

"Jack, you okay, bud?" I turned and saw Brent standing there, eyeing me uncertainly as he noticed the blood streaks around my ankles, and I smiled warily.

"Nothing I can't handle," I said. "But I might need to fly more than walk for a bit."

Brent irritably ran his fingers through his hair as he turned around like he was trying to process something. "Geez," he said, "I don't know what it is, but I don't have a scratch on me, yet you're beaten to a bloody pulp. And then there was that time you almost died from heatstroke." I nodded, trying to understand what he was getting at. Was he saying I was weak?

"It's almost like Chaos is specifically targeting you," he said.

My eyes widened as I took that information in. Was that what was happening? Was I being particularly targeted, while the other two were mostly being left alone? Why me? I was glad the other two weren't being hurt as badly, especially since I wasn't sure if they would survive the torture, but why did Chaos want me in particular to be hurt? Had I done something to him that I wasn't aware of?

Suddenly, the leaves on the trees in the jungle crumbled away like paint chipping off of a painting, leaving various shades of gray behind from wherever they had fallen. Very soon, all the color had vanished out of our little world, even the colors on our own persons. It was eerie. I scanned my own body, trying to make sense of the nonsense that I was currently consumed in, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Even my hoodie wasn't the slightest bit blue. It was only a dark shade of gray, as was everything else.

Brent retrieved my staff and handed it to me, and I used it to heft myself up to my feet, then levitate slightly off the ground so I wouldn't have to injure my ankle further, and I stood there with the other two as I waited to see what new punishment Chaos would have in store for us. Or me.

The gray sky in the background took on a misty tone, then blew away as the wind mysteriously picked up to reveal three headstones, one in front of each of us. I cringed at the sight. Cemeteries really weren't my favorite places to hang out. It reminded me too much of how I outlived everyone I loved, and how I always would.

Each of the three headstones then broke open, and a smoky mist poured out of them and reassembled into a gray figure that stood in front of each person. Each of us had a gray figure standing in front of us, and each gray figure seemed to be female, but beyond that, there were no other features to them.

Amanda tugged at my sleeve and whimpered. "Jack, what's going on?"

I shook my head while I patted hers. "I don't know, snowflake. We're just going to have to wait and see." Brent gulped, but nodded curtly as though the sight didn't bother him. I could tell it did. It was hard not to get bothered by a sight like this.

The next thing we knew, Brent's ghostly figure stepped forward, then reached out and touched him, causing a sort of explosion that sent us all flying as color rocketed back into our field of vision. I prematurely rejoiced at that, only to look down at my hands and realize that they were still gray. Amanda was still gray too. It was only Brent who wasn't. Nor was the room we were in. I stood up curiously, trying to figure out what was going on. I didn't recognize the room at all.

"Brent?" I said, "Do you have any idea what happened?"

He closed his eye and rubbed at it furiously with his hand, I assumed to rid himself of a telltale tear before either me or Amanda could figure out he was capable of crying. "Gabrielle," he said. "This was the library I first met her at."

"Gabrielle," I said, and I blinked a couple times as I tried to see whether I could remember anything about this girl, but no information was coming forth. This must have to do with Brent and Brent alone. Perhaps that was why Amanda and I were still grayed out.

"My girlfriend," he said. He then sighed and pointed off toward a table where a young girl with a long, blonde ponytail was sitting as she read a book. She seemed to be quite enjoying her reading, though she kept glancing up every so often like she expected something to happen.

After a moment, something did. Another Brent walked into the picture, came up to her table, kissed her, and the two sat down and chatted away in a whispered frenzy. I looked over at my Brent and noticed his sullen expression. The Brent in the picture seemed to be quite happy with the situation. Why was our Brent acting so opposite of this?

We watched for several minutes before the two of them got up and ran off, hand in hand, out of the library, two little geeky lovebirds just enjoying being able to spend all their geeky little time with each other. The scene shifted to them outside, and we watched as they ran through the park, poking and teasing each other. It seemed this girl was perfect for Brent. I was surprised he'd never mentioned her before.

It wasn't long before I found out why. In the midst of all their scuffling, Gabrielle's foot swung out and kicked at a random bush, but it turned out to be a bush inhabited by an angry nest of wasps, and next thing we knew, she was running as fast as she could, hands over her face, screaming at the top of her lungs despite getting stung mercilessly.

Brent, our Brent, choked beside me, and I guessed this part was getting to him the most. The Brent on screen ran after Gabrielle, commanding her to stop running and to let him get to her, but it did no good. He whipped out his phone and dialed 911 as he ran, but he found he struggled to describe where exactly in the park they were. They were somewhere by a tree and a bush and a path and… stuff. And he couldn't catch Gabrielle to make her come into a more accessible area. And she was allergic.

A sinking feeling occurred in my stomach as it suddenly clicked for me how this story was going to end. It explained the graves and the ghosts coming out of them. If that was the theme of this, then that meant that each of us was going to have to face a ghost of our past in this way, which just seemed cruel. It was hard enough to face a deceased loved one if you just got a second chance to talk to them, but to relive how they died? Why would Chaos do this?

Brent continued to run after Gabrielle, screaming for her to stop and let him help her, until finally she dropped to her knees, gasping for breath, unable to go on. The stings all over her body had swelled up to the size of baseballs, and were growing ever larger, and her breaths became more and more laborious. Brent rushed over to her and held her in his arms, reassuring her that help was on the way and to just hang in there, because she would be okay.

Except that it wasn't. After a few long, intense minutes of her struggling to bring in yet another breath of air, the beautiful girl finally closed her eyes and gave up, having breathed her last. The Brent on screen shook her, begging her to keep trying, begging her not to leave him like this, but it was no use. She was gone, and she was never coming back.

The paramedics finally found them after that, and they hauled Gabrielle off into the ambulance, but it was too late. She was never coming back. As they drove away, a lonely and dejected Brent thrust his hands in his pockets and made his way out of the park, the flicker of light in his eyes gone, never to return.

The vision finally faded, and so did the color of both the scene and of Brent. I turned to face him, my jaw dropped, but I didn't know what to say other than, "I'm sorry." He just shrugged, trying to take on a stoic look, acting as though it didn't bother him. But I had seen how Brent had behaved in that vision before he had lost Gabrielle. It did bother him. She had been his world.

Before any of us had the chance to recover, Amanda's ghostly being came up and touched her, causing another flash to bring color back into the world. Once again, I was still all in grayscale, but so was Brent this time. Amanda was the only one who wasn't. And we were in a different place.

A young woman, swinging a ring of keys from her finger, walked into the scene and smiled at the little Amanda on screen. She looked just like the Amanda Brent and I knew, which meant that this had to have happened not too long ago, making me sick to my stomach. Amanda should not have lost someone so young. I only hoped that this person wasn't too terribly important to her.

"Mommy!" shouted our Amanda, who started bouncing up and down in her excitement, a movement that was echoed by the Amanda in the scene. Brent and I exchanged a look between us. This was Amanda's mom? Hadn't Amanda asked at the beginning of all of this to be taken back to her mom? Did that mean that she wasn't even aware that her mom was dead? In addition to the sick stomach I'd had, I was now getting lightheaded just thinking about a child losing a parent so young.

"Hey, Mandy," said Amanda's mother, "You ready to go to Pop Pop's Christmas party?"

"Yeah!" Amanda jumped up and down, excited at the proclamation and chanting "Pop Pop" over and over again. This obviously was someone she really liked that they were going to go see, though the nickname could have been used to apply to anybody. I guessed it was a grandparent or something, but I wasn't entirely sure.

The two climbed into the car and rolled out onto the street, the mom swerving as she tried very hard to drive carefully over the slick, icy roads. I cringed, not liking to see people struggling with the weather that I bring, but I didn't let it get to me too much. She seemed to be driving fine thus far.

But I spoke too soon. A few minutes into the memory, snowflakes started beating at the windshield, which wouldn't have been such a problem if they hadn't started coming down so fast. Even I was starting to have trouble seeing through it, and I normally can see my way through just about any blizzard. This one had gotten out of hand, and I strangely couldn't remember why. I couldn't recall a blizzard this intense that I had done recently, though I had to have done it if it was in Amanda's memory.

Amanda's mother set her windshield wipers to go as fast as possible and flickered between the high beams and the low beams of her headlights as she tried to figure out the best way to see anything through this haze, but nothing helped. There was no clarity one way or the other. She sighed and told Amanda that she was going to have to pull off the road so that she wouldn't crash, because she couldn't see a thing. I nodded my approval at this decision. One should never drive in a blizzard this bad.

She turned the car and began to crawl toward the side of the road, a difficult feat since she really couldn't see it, but she seemed to know what she was doing, and it looked like she was going to make it.

However, she wouldn't have been the main focus of this vision if she had.

Suddenly, a car horn blared out of nowhere, and the next thing we all knew, the vision before us shook and tumbled, Amanda on screen screaming her little head off as the car rolled over and over, down into the ditch on the side of the road. "Mommy!" she screamed, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

But Mommy didn't answer. Nor did she move. And before too long, Amanda started to stop moving too, and the vision went black.

I blinked as the gray came back, then shook my head to readjust after that weird exit from the last vision. Had Amanda passed out from that? Was that why the vision had ended so suddenly? Brent's certainly hadn't ended like that.

I wrapped my arms around myself and started to sob. If it hadn't been for me, Amanda's mom would still be alive today. Amanda didn't even know her mom was dead, it seemed, though she was now standing beside me, crying. It was all my fault.

A hand landed on my shoulder, and I looked up to see Brent. "Don't blame yourself," he said. "You were just doing your job, right?"

I shook my head. "That's just it, I don't know what I was doing! I don't remember that blizzard at all!"

Brent quirked an eyebrow. "Really?" he said. "I remember it."

"You do?! Then how come I don't?"

"I don't-" he started, but then he stopped speaking when he saw the third ghost approach and gesture toward me.

I shook my head and tried to step away from the ghost, but there was nowhere to go other than here. "No," I said, having a pretty good idea of what I would be witnessing. "No… nonononono!" But there was no place to hide, and the ghost approached and touched me nonetheless.

A spark flared up, bringing color into my field of view as well as a change of scene which I instantly recognized. It was the lake in Burgess that I was so familiar with, and my stomach tied itself into knots. I did not want to relive this. Not one bit. Wasn't there some way out of this? It had been bad enough to have to watch the other two relive their experiences. Did I really have to go through mine too?

I looked down at myself and noticed that, for some reason, I was still completely in grayscale. Brent noticed this too and asked about it, and I realized with horror that Chaos was out to play another trick of some sort, making my experience different from those of the other two. I just didn't know how he planned to do it just yet, but I figured I'd find out very soon.

I reached in front of me and felt what seemed almost like a filmy substance of sorts spread out in front of me. When I pushed against it, my hand passed through it and regained its colorization, though there was something wrong. The colors were too deep, too rich to be me. At least, too deep to be me as I am now. My skin used to be darker and redder. I bowed my head in resignation as it clicked in my mind what Chaos had in store for me.

He didn't want me to just relive the memory as the other two had done. He wanted me to fully relive the experience in every detail. Not as Jack Frost, but as Jackson Overland.

I wasn't ready for this, and so I pulled my hand back toward me, figuring that if I extricated myself from the filmy substance now, I wouldn't have to go through with the vision for a while, since I would just stay gray while I stalled. But Chaos had other ideas, because as I retracted my hand, the film stayed tightly gripped around it until it pulled to a point of breaking, at which point the air on the other side of the film rushed in and threw me headlong out into the scene.

I coughed as I regained my breath and shivered slightly from the cold, which felt so strange after several hundred years of not feeling the cold in this way. I stared at my hands, both redder than I had seen them in half of forever, and I stood up and dusted the snow off of my cloak. Another thing that I hadn't seen in half of forever.

I turned back and grimaced at the two gray figures that I could thankfully still see, and I saw that Brent's jaw had dropped at the sight of me. I chuckled awkwardly and rubbed the back of my head, guessing what he was reacting to, though I wasn't sure if my explanation would make any sense to him.

"This is how I used to look, Brent. Back when I was mortal."

"Wait," said Brent, and he gave me a double take, "M-Mortal? Are you trying to tell me you're not now?"

"Eh heh," I said, "Well, I can die if someone kills me, but I haven't aged in several hundred years, Brent. I think that falls into some definitions of immortality."

The poor boy seemed to be at a loss for words as he flailed around at this information, trying to figure out what was going on. Maybe I shouldn't have blurted things out like that. I guessed that I'd figured it was okay to say just about anything to him by this point since he'd just decided to go with everything as though it was all a big hallucination, but he seemed to be starting to accept me as my own person the longer we went through this. Maybe I needed to guard my tongue more from now on.

"Who are you, Jack?" he said after finally finding some words. "Who are you really? And how could nobody have noticed a boy who hasn't aged at all since colonial days?"

"Heh…" I looked off to the side and noticed that my sister was running toward me. There was no time to explain things to Brent. As it was, I felt a weird tingling sensation creeping over me, which made me want to act exactly the way I had last time, even though my mind was screaming to do anything but. My will was slipping through my fingers. I had to speak quickly. I looked back at Brent and said, "I'll talk about it after the vision passes."

"That's not fair! Jack. Jack!" He pounded against something in front of him that I couldn't see. Had the film solidified into a hard screen for him to keep him from interfering? I supposed Chaos might do that just to make me suffer more. If no one was there for me during all of this as I relived this event, it would be much harder. And this was definitely going to be more intense than what the other two had just gone through. Brent was right. Chaos was particularly targeting me.

My will completely gone now, I turned to my sister, smiled at her and waved. "Hurry, Tannie, or spring will arrive before you do!"

Tannie gasped for breath as she ran to catch up with me. "Stop being such a fool, Jack. Just because you possess inexcusably long legs does not mean I take months to traverse this distance."

I laughed at her choice in wording, both from finding her retort funny at the time, and from my reaction now of finding her old-fashioned speech kind of endearing. I just hoped my own speech wouldn't be as bad as that, because it would just sound dorky coming out of my own mouth. I honestly didn't remember everything I had said during this scene and always paraphrased it in modern speech whenever I told the story to someone else. Did Chaos somehow remember better than I did? Had he actually witnessed this?

We walked to the lake, all the while my mind fought with my body to do something different, anything different, but my mind had no effect whatsoever on my body. It was on autopilot now and had me imprisoned within it for the ride to hell.

Tannie and I kicked our shoes off on the bank of the pond, and as I knelt down to pull on my ice skates, she had whipped hers on so fast that she took off running out into the middle of the lake before I'd even gotten one foot in one of my skates. Darn that girl, how had she learned to get those things on that fast? It wasn't like the shoes of this day and age were easy to put on and take off.

I would have just blown her a raspberry and continued to struggle with my own skates, but she had slipped and fallen down, and like the fussy older brother I was, I had to get out there and make sure she was okay. So, I threw my skates over my shoulder and ran out onto the ice, barefoot, and stupid as all hell.

I extended a hand and helped her to her feet, then smirked at her. "Very well, Tannie. That was a devilish move. But it is now time to cease being a devil and return to the edge of the pond where it is safe." Great, I really did sound dorky in this time. Couldn't Chaos at least spare me the indignity of knowing exactly what I'd said?

"I do not wish to return, dear brother." She laughed and skated away from me before I had the chance to grab at her and force her to come back to the side of the lake so I could at least get my own skates on. I rolled my eyes and sighed as I ran after her, strangely adept on ice even while being fully human. I guessed it was just natural that I'd become the spirit of winter if I was already this capable without any special powers. Funny how I'd never noticed that before.

"You shall wish you had wished it so, you devil of a sister." I laughed despite myself as I ran to catch up with her, but as I was not a winter spirit yet in this memory, I slipped on the ice and fell down as I skidded along in the direction I had been running, my skates sliding in a different direction on their own quest for adventure. It seemed only my skates would be getting any skating done today if Tannie had her way about it.

I pushed myself up to my feet despite Tannie's incessant laughter at my little slip up and brushed off my clothes and started heading toward her again when I heard something that sent fear through my heart. My winter spirit tenses sent my thoughts into overdrive and my ears started ringing. I would know the sound of cracking ice anywhere. _Oh no. It's already begun._

Tannie hadn't noticed the problem yet, but I had, even in the memory, and I ran toward her as fast as I could. A cracking sound beneath my own feet made me look down to see that I too had stepped on a patch of thin ice, which prevented me from reaching her. The last thing I wanted to do was send her into the lake by combining my weight with hers. I had to come up with something else.

Finally, Tannie looked down and saw the ice cracking around her and realized the kind of danger she was in, and then she noticed that I was in the same kind of danger myself from trying to get her out of this predicament. Fear etched its way over her features as she looked up at me and said, "Jack, I am afraid."

I had to break out of this situation. I had to do something different than what I had done in the past. I had to drop down onto the ice and crawl away and get Tannie to do the same, which would have most likely gotten the both of us safely off of it. I had to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

But I didn't have any choice on what I did. "All is well, Tanja. We shall be all right. You shall not fall in. We shall make merry instead." I internally winced at my word choices, desperately wishing that I could at least relive this memory with the words I chose to remember myself saying and not the old-fashioned speech that I seemed to have.

"We will surely not!" said Tannie. I chuckled despite myself. My attitude of "making merry" in this situation, or "having fun" as I usually said in the modern day, was kind of a bad suggestion during this serious of a predicament. But I couldn't help myself. It was just who I was.

"Would I deceive you?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "You were born to deceive!" Ouch. I hadn't remembered that she'd actually been that harsh. Though I supposed I couldn't deny the truth of it. I laughed again.

"Very well," I said, "but this one time I speak truth. Verily, verily, you shall be… you shall be well." I gulped, nervous at my words, and I wasn't sure if it was because I wasn't entirely sure of the truth of them, or because I despised my choice of the word "verily". I mean really, who talks like that? I was such an old fart, it wasn't even funny anymore. "Would you play a game? We shall play hopscotch, as we play every day."

I knew what was coming next, and I fought with ever fiber of my being to avoid having to go through with this part of the drama, but I couldn't change a thing. My body did as it wished, and it didn't need my mind's input at all.

"It is as simple as one…" I took a step. "Two…" The ice cracked beneath my feet, and I pretended it wasn't that big of a deal by flailing comically to make her laugh, not that I needed to flail to make myself comical. My speech alone was probably making Brent and Amanda die of laughter right now. I wished I could at least make that stop, if nothing else. "Three." I hopped onto safe ground, smiled at Tannie, and then turned and grabbed the nearest stick I could find that would enable me to whisk her off of that dangerous area. Her mobility on the ice wasn't as good as mine, so she was going to need all the help she could get.

"It is now your turn to try," I said, and I began to count as she struggled to take the steps, "One… Two…Three!" On "three", I had hooked the end of the stick around Tannie's waist and flung her off of the deadly ice with as much force as I could muster, not wanting to take any further chances with her. That ice had looked like it had gotten pretty weak with her standing on it, and I didn't want to risk a second attempt at getting her off of it.

Unfortunately, the force of that swing ended up propelling me over to the same spot where she had been standing. Tannie and I both looked at each other and smiled at my success at getting her safely off of that danger spot, but internally, my mind was reeling. _Don't stand up! Don't stand up!_

My body hadn't listened to me about this memory even once before, so why should it listen to me now when things had suddenly gotten crucial? I stood up on the ice, still smiling at Tannie, when suddenly the ice gave way beneath my feet and plummeted me into the freezing water below, me just barely hearing Tannie scream my name before my head disappeared below the surface of the water.

The stick I had used, which I now realized had been my staff all along, had flown out of my hands when I fell, and I was now flailing aimlessly as I tried to find my way back to the surface of the water. I could swim, and I flailed and kicked as I attempted to find my way out based on the way gravity was pulling me. Any other time of year, I'm sure I would have made it out alive, but during this time of year it was impossible. My head smacked against a barrier of ice, and my hand reached out to try and find out where the hole I had fallen in through had gone to. I must have drifted. How would I ever find it in time? I gulped as realization hit me from the memory of what I had actually gone through: I wouldn't.

But I was still trapped in the memory and unable to do anything other than struggle to hold onto life for as long as I could, and I frantically pounded at the ice above me, hoping that maybe I could find a weak spot and break it open. The surface of the ice felt different each time I touched it, which meant I was flailing so much that I was still drifting, though I didn't know by how much or in which direction. I could only hope that maybe, just maybe, I would somehow find the hole I had fallen through. Though my mind knew it was futile. I'd already lived through this. And now I was being forced to live through it again. And all for what?

I ran out of breath as the air leaked out of my nose and mouth, and my movements slowed. No more air was able to come in, and so in a desperate attempt to find something to fill my starving lungs, I inhaled whatever was there to be inhaled. My lungs filled with water, and I coughed and gagged as my lungs tried desperately to right the wrong that they had just done in taking in water instead of air, but it only made things worse. I was quickly drowning, and there was nothing I or anybody else could do about it.

I could only imagine how Brent and Amanda were reacting to this scene right now. I wished they could be beside me and comfort me through this while they stayed safe, but Chaos didn't seem to want to allow even that. He really did want me to suffer for some reason. I hadn't the foggiest idea what I had ever done to piss him off so much.

My limbs gradually went numb in the cold water and my mobility decreased bit by bit until I couldn't move at all. My eyes then drifted shut just before I myself passed out.

The next thing I knew, my eyes were open again, but I was still under the water. I was still freezing, but I wasn't desperate for air all of a sudden. I guessed it was more similar to how a baby doesn't need to breathe while in the womb, and I was just as terrified as a baby suddenly realizing that they're going to be forced out of their mother. My mind was strangely calm, considering that I knew what was happening now, but my body hadn't the slightest clue what was happening for whatever reason, even though I had lived through this before. It was my body that felt the fear this time around.

The fear died down quite a bit as soon as I saw something and was no longer cloaked in blindness. In this case, it was the moon, shining through the ice. I nearly breathed a sigh of relief, except that the me of this time hadn't even thought to breathe at the time. I guessed it made sense, since I was still under water, but I wanted to get out of here already and get the memory done with.

I slowly rose up to the surface, ice cracking around me as my body pushed its way through the ice, and suddenly I was above the water, and I finally gasped for breath, gulping down air like I hadn't tasted it in a couple millennia. That at least was something that both my body and my mind could agree on. Breathing was a very good thing.

Little by little, the cold feeling left my body as cold became the norm for me, and I just stared at the moon, the one thing that felt safe through all of this chaos. I heard a voice tell me my name, Jack Frost, and then I was gently set back down on the ice. I was now expected to go out and make a new life for myself.

And just like that, the dam broke. The tingling feeling left me and I was me again, able to act and think of my own free will, and I turned to see both Brent and Amanda regain their colorization and come running toward me. I heaved a huge sigh of relief that that traumatic experience was over, picked my staff up from off of the lake, then turned back toward them just as they both bowled into me, wrapping their arms so tightly around me that I worried I might die of suffocation.

"Jack! What the hell was that?" said Brent, panic clearly in his tone. "You were supposed to witness the death of your sister. That was the pattern. Why did-Why did…?"

I sighed and shook my head. It made sense enough to me why Chaos had chosen that scene for me, but I supposed it would take a bit of explanation for him to understand. "I never actually saw my sister die," I said.

Brent let go of me and stood back to eye me quizzically. "What?!"

"Nope," I said. "She's gone by now, of course, but I never saw how she died." I sighed wistfully and turned to look at the place on the lake where I had seen her last. "I-I just never saw her again. I lost everything after I fell into the lake." I wrapped my arms around myself to try and help myself feel a little more secure, hiding my hands under my cloak. Apparently Chaos didn't see fit to give me back my hoodie either, even though he'd given me my normal form back. Did he find it funny to have me walking around in colonial garb or something? Brent was sure looking at me awkwardly for it.

Brent cast his eyes to the ground for several moments, and I could tell that he was trying to search for words to say. This was certainly a difficult situation to deal with, especially since he had now witnessed my transformation, something which no mortal had ever done before. I doubted he heard the voice in my head telling me my name, but I was pretty sure he'd witnessed everything else. That had to be pretty traumatic for both him and Amanda to witness.

Strangely, it was Amanda who ended up asking the question Brent wanted to ask, as she tugged on my sleeve and said, "Jack, are you dead?"

I chuckled and knelt down to her eye level and shook my head. "No, Amanda. I'm very much alive." I paused and let out my breath as I thought for a moment and looked up at Brent. "Though I think I might have died for a while after I fell in the water. I'm not entirely sure."

"Wait," said Brent, his logical mind clearly having issues with this. "Are you trying to tell me that you died and then came back to life? How is that even humanly possible?"

I shrugged and stood back up, slightly amused at the question, but mostly just awkward. "I wouldn't know," I said, "But I know that I was no longer human once I became this."

Again, Brent's logical mind couldn't deal with this, and I could swear I could see the gears churning in his head as he tried to come up with some kind of logical explanation for this. And one by one, the gears in his mind were blowing up as each part of his mind received an error message. "You're-You're not human?!"

I shook my head. Brent then threw his hands up in exasperation, and I was worried he would burst a blood vessel if he didn't calm himself down, so I conjured up a snowflake and blew it in his face. He blinked a couple times, then started to breathe deeper, and after a few seconds, he had at least calmed down enough to speak again. So that power had managed to come in handy after all.

"Th-Then… what the hell are you, Jack?"

A hand went over Amanda's mouth as she gasped in shock, and she shook her finger at Brent. "Uh oh, someone said a bad word. Naughty, naughty Brent."

I chuckled and rubbed her hair, then said, "He's just scared, snowflake. Just let him be for now, but don't you say what he's saying, okay?" She nodded her agreement, and then I turned back to face Brent himself. I sighed. "Would you believe me if I told you that I had turned into a fairy?"

"No," said Brent.

I rolled my eyes. "Well, I turned into a fairy."

"Gah!" said Brent, running his fingers through his hair and then tearing at it. I got ready to conjure up another snowflake for him, but he stopped me before I could do anything. "Why do you keep talking like that? First the whole magic thing, and now this? What the hell is wrong with you? There is no such thing as fairies!"

I huffed and turned away from him while crossing my arms. "Why does it even matter to you so much? Aren't I just part of your hallucination or something? Or don't your hallucinations allow for the existence of fairies?"

Brent audibly growled, then grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me back around to face him. "Listen, Jack," he said, "I'm only gonna say this once, so you'd better listen good. Yes, this whole world seems like a big hallucination. I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure it is. But the more I get to know you and Amanda, and the more I get to watch how the two of you think and act so differently from how any part of my mind works, the more convinced I become that the two of you are real people who have somehow gotten sucked into the same hallucination as I did."

My eyes widened at this. Brent was starting to think I was real? Did that mean he was starting to believe? I still didn't feel any belief coming from him, so I didn't think he believed in me as Jack Frost yet, but believing I was a real person was a start.

"And now with you trying to throw me off with your claiming to be a fairy and all…" He shook his head. "I just can't take it, Jack! I can barely keep myself sane in this crazy, messed up world as it is. Don't go around trying to tell me that you're something that shouldn't even logically exist!"

I stood there for several seconds, my mouth agape in shock. Brent cared about my welfare all of a sudden? I'd been suspecting that he was starting to care a little bit, but I hadn't realized that he'd reached the conclusion that I must be a real person. Somehow I hadn't picked up on that at all.

The next thing I did surprised even me, as I stepped forward and threw my arms around Brent. He gasped at the sudden touch, but I only held him tighter. "Thank you," I said. "I'm glad to know that someone cares." I paused for a moment, then said, "And I'm honestly sorry that my existence falls outside of your realm of knowledge." I really was too. I didn't want to keep scaring him by being something that was so hard to understand.

I pulled away from him, then waved to the two of them to follow. "Come on, guys. We should get moving before Chaos does something else nasty to us for sitting around." Amanda sprung right to my side, but Brent waited a few moments before reluctantly following us himself.

I hung my head, feeling sorry for him. It was almost like I'd broken his mind, and I didn't know how to make it better. I only hoped that given enough time, he could repair it himself.

_**Did you survive the long chapter? I assume that if you're reading this, you probably did. Either that, or you're a ghost who's very dedicated to finding out how this story ends. (If the latter is the case, please write to me and tell me all about it. I want to hear from someone who is THAT dedicated to my work, haha.)**_

_**Anyway, I'll see you next time I get the chance to write. Reviews would be awesome. And I hope you all have a wonderful day! :)**_


	5. The Sound of Fun

_**Hey, guys! Long time, no see! I'm terribly sorry about that. I've been dealing with lots of stuff in life, among that the loss of internet access and the loss of inspiration.**_

_**But I have some good news. I actually have completely finished writing this story while my internet was out! So you can know for sure that this story will be updated all the way through to the end, and in a fairly timely manner. The bad news is that I still don't have regular internet access, so I still will likely be limited to one chapter a week until the internet finally gets turned on at my house. Unless you guys send me lots of reviews and beg me to give you another chapter today, then I might be nice. *snickers* Kidding... well... I probably would take that bribe, but still. It'll probably be once a week most of the time until my internet gets turned on at the house. But hey, at least the story's finished, right? :)**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians, but I just got a new phone. That has nothing to do with ROTG, but I'm happy I have a new phone, so I thought I'd put that in there.**_

One thing was for sure: Chaos was sick, twisted, and just downright rude. I did not want to be stuck in my old-fashioned clothes for as long as he chose to keep my old ones, thank you very much. But I wasn't about to strip down to nothing either. There were children about.

It seemed it was just something I was going to have to grin and bear for the time being, though I had a slim hope of the silly old clothes disappearing and being replaced by my current outfit once we left the scene of the visions. But as the visionary landscape gradually faded out of sight and I continued to wear the same clothing he had given me from that last experience, I gave a sigh and resigned myself to my fate. It seemed he wanted me to deal with who I used to be, and not just who I was at the moment.

On we walked, and my eyebrow quirked anxiously as I waited to see the signs of whatever new challenge would crop up, but nothing had at the moment. The landscape was just fading more and more with every step we took, and it wasn't being replaced by anything. This was disconcerting.

I turned to look back in the direction we had come, and I sighed in dismay to see that it was all a black void in that direction. There was less substance if we went backward than if we went forward, even if barely. Chaos obviously didn't want us turning back and getting out of this latest challenge. I rolled my eyes and continued moving along, breathing a word to Brent and Amanda that everything would be fine, though I wasn't sure if I actually felt it.

Before too long, the landscape around us had vanished completely, and there was still not a sight to be seen anywhere. The three of us were trapped in a void of our own, just wandering forward on imagined ground and hoping it would soon be accompanied by real ground. Having one's feet touch down on nothing and yet not falling through is strangely disconcerting.

I thought this situation couldn't get worse, but I should have known better than to make such an assumption. Things can always get worse if you assume you've hit rock bottom. The next time I glanced down at my hand, I gave a little jolt to realize that the tips of my fingers were slightly shorter than normal. I flexed my fingers and tried to inspect the damage done, but I felt no pain. Maybe there really wasn't any damage. Maybe I was just running off with my imagination again.

A few more steps and a cry from Brent over the same phenomenon occurring with his toe, and I knew I wasn't merely imagining things. This was Chaos' newest trick: making us disappear.

"Okay," I said, waving my hands around to try and summon order despite the lack of it everywhere we looked. "Maybe if we just don't move, we'll be able to keep ourselves in one piece. Just stay put."

"But we can't stay here!" Brent angrily kicked at an imaginary rock, but it was surprisingly dissatisfying, especially since there hadn't even been enough friction for his foot to make a scuffing sound. We really were walking in a field of nothingness. "We have to find a way out. I don't know about your weird body, Jack, but Amanda and I… well, we'll die if we stay cooped up in a place like this for too long without food or water."

My face turned solemn, and I nodded. He was absolutely right. But I didn't know what to do. And Amanda was starting to cry, which only further complicated matters by making me not able to think straight. What did I normally do when children were upset? The thoughts weren't coming to me the way I wanted them to.

"Alright," I said, and without missing a beat, just took off running forward once again, ignoring the possible consequences of doing so. "Then the sooner we get out of here, the better, right?"

"Jack, what are you-" Brent attempted to shout after me, but it seemed he gave up and just joined in the chase. His disgruntled but resigned stance on the issue seemed to amuse Amanda too, and she began to giggle even as she gave chase to the both of us. I had no idea what was going to happen or where we were going, but at least we were all together for now. That helped.

Running through the void was easy enough when every part of me was where I knew it should have been, but when I could no longer sense the presence of one of my feet, the simple act of running was suddenly not so simple anymore. I knew my foot had disappeared, but I chose not to look to see this or I could be overwhelmed by fear, so I continued forward in the best way I knew how. Even if it required limping the rest of the way.

However, if limping had been all that Chaos required for this challenge, it would have been a very easy challenge indeed. Before I knew it, my entire leg had disappeared, then one of my arms, then my staff. Bit by bit, the rest of my body gradually dissolved before my eyes as I plugged on to the best of my ability, until finally even my eyes vanished into the same oblivion as everything else and plunged me into total darkness.

One would think this would be what it felt like to be dead, but considering how Chaos had already graciously shown me exactly what that felt like, I could honestly say that this was not the same feeling. Somehow I still clung to life, but I did not cling to form. I had no body, but I didn't know what else I possessed.

"Where are we?" I said, expecting that question not to be heard, and was surprised when it was actually audible to my ears. Well, not really ears, since I didn't have any, but I heard it all the same.

"No idea, bud," said Brent from somewhere nearby. "I can't see anything."

"Neither can I," I said.

I was about to contribute the detail that my body was entirely gone, when Amanda decided to contribute that detail for me. "Jack, I melted."

I sighed, surprised I could still do that too, and directed my attention her way. "You mean that your body disappeared too, huh?"

"Uh huh."

"Mine too," said Brent, "I don't know how on earth we're still talking to each other without vocal chords."

He did bring up a good point, and it would have given me pause to scratch my head if I'd had a head to scratch. This was quite the puzzle. We didn't have bodies, yet we were still alive. And we were all still able to talk, but we had no vocal chords to do so. This was a really random series of events.

Not knowing what else to do, the three of us just sat there in silence in the void we were trapped in, if sitting is possible without a body to sit with. We were stationary, in any case. And I wracked my mind for any input that could possibly help us figure out where we were or how to get out of here, but came up short no matter how many times I tried.

"Jack?" said Amanda all of a sudden. "I'm scared."

That had sounded all too familiar, and I longed to throw my arms around the girl and hold her and stroke her hair until her fears melted away, but there was nothing I could do. It seemed I couldn't even get close to her. Heaven knows I didn't even know how to move in this state. "I know," I said, "but it'll be okay. We'll get out of here soon. I promise."

"And how can you promise that?" said Brent, a nasty tone to his voice. A shiver ran through me that I didn't like, but I brushed it off as nothing more than me not liking harsh confrontations and turned my attention back to him.

"Because I've always gotten us out of things before, haven't I?"

"You haven't gotten us out of this crazy land of Chaos yet," he said. Ouch. That wounded me. Part of me even felt like it had literally wounded me, though I brushed that aside too since it didn't make sense.

"Yeah, well, I'm working on it. Just trust me."

"Why should we trust you?!" Brent's voice suddenly arced through the place we all filled and ricocheted through my being. "We've been following you around for who knows how long and we're no closer to figuring out how to get out of this crazy place than before. And the insanity's just getting worse with each challenge. Why should we trust you, huh? You tell me!"

I could no longer ignore the effect of Brent's words on my being, as I began to shiver at first and then pulsate so strongly that I could barely hear anything he said, though each new harsh word that came at me bounced me in a different direction and left me debilitated where I sat until he stopped speaking. Even once he was done, it took what I assumed to be several minutes for the vibrations to settle down after what had felt like such a harsh attack. I had no idea what that had been, but I hoped it wouldn't happen again.

A distant voice eventually called out. "Jack?" Amanda's.

I could barely find my voice to respond, but as I seemed to only be a voice and nothing more, I managed all the same. "H-Hello?"

A moment passed in silence, and then Brent finally commented again as I mentally winced and hoped he wouldn't shout again. That hadn't been a pleasant experience. "How did you get all the way over there?"

It seemed he was done chewing me out for the moment. Maybe he'd experienced something unexpected too. It wouldn't have surprised me considering how strange this place was, whatever this place was. "I-I don't know," I said. "It happened when you yelled. I just… flew apart, then bounced around until I wound up over here."

Another moment of silence passed. "There's something to bounce off of?" Ah, Brent, always the logical one.

"I don't know," I said, and I would have shrugged if I could have. "I bounced off of something. Though I suppose it felt similar to how we were walking on nothing a bit ago."

"Hmm…" said Brent, and he once again left me in silence while he pondered the great mysteries of the universe. Pity I couldn't just read his thoughts while in this form. It would have made it a lot more interesting to be like this while waiting for someone to actually talk to me. However, he didn't take long to speak up again this time. "If we can hear each other talk, and there's something to bounce off of, why don't we hear our voices echo?"

That was a good question. It was surprising I hadn't thought of that. I was always the obnoxious one who shouted into every frozen ravine I came upon just to hear myself shouting back. It had served to allow me to have the illusion of conversation for those three hundred years of solitude. It had also triggered quite a few avalanches, but still. I now found myself burning with the itch to see if I could create an echo here, and I conjured up the biggest shout of, "ECHO!" I had ever done.

My voice did indeed go and hit the imagined barrier and bounce off of it, but what I hadn't forseen was that I ended up getting dragged along with it, myself bouncing back and forth as I repeatedly shouted, "ECHO, Echo, echo…" each time I and the previous sound crossed paths. I wasn't meaning to say the word again, but I kept saying it anyway. For some reason, I couldn't help but do it.

Finally I slowed to a stop, and not a moment too soon as I felt mildly dizzy from that experience and needed a break before I said anything else. Heck, at this rate, I would be lucky if I ever spoke again.

"How did you do that?" said Brent, suddenly much closer than before. Well, at least I'd managed to bounce back toward the group. I supposed there was always something to be thankful for.

My voice came out shakily, unsure of whether I should even attempt speaking again, but I was too stupid to avoid speaking for long. "I-I-I don't know… I shouted, and then I, uh… I-I seemed to have become the echo myself."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know," I said. I really wished I could scratch my head or lick my lips or something. I was so used to being able to convey my uncertainty through body language, but now it had to be done entirely through voice, for voice was all I had. "I made a sound, and then I bounced back and forth and echoed that sound. Or became that sound. O-Or… I don't even know." I wanted to run my fingers through my hair in my agitation, and being unable to placate myself by even doing that caused me to growl in irritation. I rarely do that, but these were unusual times.

Brent spent several minutes, or I assumed it was several minutes, just thinking to himself. I wished he would speak. It was so lonely in this weird place when no one talked, and I didn't want to make myself echo again to feel the illusion of conversation since I would have to go and be the echo myself. Perhaps I could convince Amanda to talk to me? But then, she was terrified. It was probably best to leave her be until Brent and I figured out what was going on.

"We have no bodies," said Brent, "Only voices."

"Yeah," I said waiting to see if he would say anything less obvious.

"You bounced back and forth when you tried to make an echo," he continued.

"Right," I said.

"You actually became the echo yourself?"

"Yeah?" Was he going to come up with anything on his own?

He finally made a sound as if clearing his throat, though I knew he didn't actually have a throat to clear, but still. He apparently could make the sound if he wanted to. "This is really weird," he said at last, "but I suppose anything is possible in this world. Have we… have we turned into sound?"

I would have blinked if I'd been able to. "Come again?"

"We're still having physical reactions to things," he said, "what with you bouncing around from the echo or not being able to stay nearby when I shouted. But they're not the reactions we're accustomed to, since we have no bodies. All we have is sound. I think we might have entered a world composed entirely of sound, and we're nothing but our voices."

What I wanted to do was just stare at him in a silent state of shock for an undetermined amount of time, but considering that I was currently barred from that activity, I resorted to a muffled scream so as to avoid creating any sort of echo. I didn't like this. Not one bit. I couldn't cope with just being a voice for the rest of my existence. Especially with that unpleasant feeling of bouncing off things at the response of anything shouted. I hoped I wouldn't have to go through that anytime again soon.

"H-How are we supposed to get out of here?" I said, feeling my very being start to shiver, which altered my voice to match the shakiness I felt. "We can't even seem to move unless we shout at each other, and we can barely control that. Or I can barely control it." I sighed. "I doubt you'd fare any better though."

I didn't get a response to that, which left me assuming that Brent agreed with me, or at least was afraid to contest my words. For once, there really was no arguing with my logic, and it seemed he knew it.

Though I'd forgotten to take Amanda into account. "What would happen if we made pretty sounds?"

Now that was an interesting idea. I had no idea what would happen then. "I don't know, snowflake. What do you think would happen?"

She must have decided that was an invitation to try it out, because she didn't wait for a go ahead from me or Brent before she started her little experiment, which turned out to be her rendition of "Silent Night". That must have been the prettiest song she knew at her age, and I couldn't find it in my heart to disagree. Besides, my heart had melted already, both the physical one and now the emotional one too at hearing her little voice.

Brent and I silently listened to her sing her way through the first verse, and then she started over again on the same verse. It seemed she didn't know anything more of that song, though that was fine by me. Most people weren't constantly bombarded with everything Christmas every time they were in the northern hemisphere, unlike a certain winter sprite who shall remain nameless.

The vibrations from her voice washed over me, soothing me down to my core. I found myself thinking that even if I did remain stuck here forever, it wouldn't be as bad as I had thought so long as I could hear sounds like this and hear them often. I felt a pull to respond to her little song somehow, and while I resisted at first since I don't particularly care for my singing voice, eventually the call became too much to resist, and I joined my voice with her in song.

It seemed the same predicament had afflicted Brent, as he joined the two of us shortly after. We had nothing better to do than sing, and singing felt strangely better than it ever had before, so we just continued to sing the first verse of "Silent Night" over and over since all three of us knew it without problem. The pulling sensation continued and only grew stronger with each repeated verse, and I could feel the other two voices drawing nearer. At least this was ensuring we wouldn't have to be separated from each other, so long as we sang together, and I found all the tension in my being flowing out of me.

The next thing I was aware of, I felt my being pressing up against some form of resistance, though it didn't feel like an unpleasant sensation, so I just ignored it and continued singing. The pulling sensation continued, even though it seemed we had drawn as close as we could possibly get to each other, but it didn't seem to bother anybody, despite the weirdness. I then felt the resistance start to give as the pulling sensation began to pull me through and into whatever had been trying to keep me out, as well as pulling whatever it was into myself.

Despite how I logically should have been scared right then, I wasn't. It felt good, and the closer I got to the others, the better I felt. It soon clicked in my mind that the pull I was feeling was from the sounds interacting with each other and wanting to merge into one harmonious voice. Since we were nothing but voices ourselves, the logical conclusion to jump to from that realization was that we were all being pulled to merge into each other and become one sound. That realization should have scared me even more. But once again, it didn't.

We all continued singing even as my essence was pulled into Brent and Amanda and became a part of them even as their essences invaded my space and became a part of mine. Our three voices merged together perfectly, creating one pure tone. None of us could tell where one of us stopped and another started, as we had more or less lost our identities for the time being, but we didn't think to care. This just felt right for the time being.

Upon hitting the final note of the verse we had been singing, we collectively held the note and sang it as strongly as we possibly could, somehow just feeling that this was the right thing to do. The world around us began to shake, and I heard the universe cracking as the quake spread its way through the entire void.

Light pierced its way through some of the cracks, and I could miraculously see it as several large chunks of the void fell away only to be replaced by glorious, glorious light shining in from the world outside. We continued to wait patiently as the rest of the world around us continued to crack and chip away bit by bit, and a tickling sensation returned to my being as my body began to reform around me. I took in a breath of fresh air that wafted in from the outside and was elated to find that I could do it.

After several more minutes of watching the sound world chip and fall away, the rest of it just crumpled into dust, leaving us standing there in the midst of a meadow filled with all kinds of flowers and grasses. We took a few minutes just to breathe in relief and gain our bearings before trying to figure out what to do next. Surely Chaos wouldn't pull his next trick on us before we could even ground ourselves. That last experience had been quite trippy.

However, after a few minutes of waiting and realizing what I wasn't noticing as I looked around, I look around me deliberately one more time just to make sure, then placed my hand on my chest as my heart rate sped up in a panic. Chaos had already started the next challenge for us, even before we'd fully left the last one.

The three of us were still merged together into one body.

**_*snickers* This chapter was fun. Anyway, feel free to tell me what you think. I'm also trying to decide whether to write a sequel or not, but I won't write one unless I have a full plot, so if any of you have any plot ideas, please do suggest. You don't have to know how the story ends to make suggestions. All I need are ideas, and ideas can come from anything. ;)_**

**_But yeah, hope you enjoyed that. Reviews would be lovely. See you next time!_**


	6. Who Do You Think You Are?

_**Wow, I got four reviews on that last chapter in one day? I don't think that has happened for this story yet. That makes this story seem almost... normal. *laughs* Thank you guys so much!**_

_**So, since you guys were so nice, I decided to be nice too and find a way back to the library today to upload another chapter. I don't know if I can do this every day, but if you guys keep motivating me like that, I'll keep trying. *chuckles***_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians, and my inspiration for creatively destroying disclaimers is unfortunately gone at the moment. Pity.**_

It took a while for the full impact of what had happened to hit me, but once it did, I actually fell over from the impact of what all this meant for me. And for us.

I clutched my arms to my sides and began shivering, though I strangely wasn't sure whether this was a reaction to the cold or to fear. I honestly felt cold at the moment, though I also did not. And both reactions seemed perfectly natural, which was intensely confusing. I knew we had previously been three separate entities just before that last challenge had consumed us in its depths, but now I wasn't so sure. Just after we had merged, I had still been referring to the collective as "we" and occasionally referring to the one person I used to be as "I", a separate entity from the other two in the group. However, the longer this went on, the less I was able to see any of the three of us as separate, and the more I referred to the being in this body as "I".

That's right. One being. I couldn't even see myself as three people anymore, and that thought scared me. I knew logically that there were three people trapped in here with three separate lives to live once they all got out of this crazy world and back to their own lives, though with how weird things were going in this world, I wasn't sure if each of the three would make it out in one piece. Chaos had never promised for all three people to make it out as all three people. He had only said that the three of us needed each other in order to get out, and that if one of us died, all of us would be stuck forever. Could he have been meaning that the three of us had to become one person, and that we would never be able to live our separate lives again?

I knew in that moment that I would not be able to stand it for another minute if I didn't know the extent of the damage done, and I took off running as fast as I could toward a pool of water I could see a few yards distant. Part of me wanted to fly that distance, but another part of me was terrified of the thought and wanted nothing to do with the magic I now possessed. I could find no way to settle the two sides of my mind into any semblance of an agreement, and giving in to either side felt painful. I needed my magic, and I needed to avoid my magic too. Quite the dilemma. I chose to ignore my magic this time and possibly use it the next time and hopefully that helped both sides of my mind to not panic too much.

I dropped to my knees in front of the pool and leaned over to peer into it, this being the only mirror I was going to find anywhere. My hair was partially short and white, but also streaked with short brown hair. Equally strange was the under layer of long brown hair beneath the brown and white streaked layer. I ran my hand through my hair as I thought. This was the result of three people's hair combining onto one head. So strange. My eyes were an equally odd combination with rings of blue, brown, and green.

I shakily pushed myself to my feet, then absentmindedly ran my hands over my hips as though to gauge that damage too, then stopped. I was not in the mood to see what had become of my gender too after having several people merge into one being. If I honestly got stuck like this, I would have to deal with it eventually, but there was no reason I should have to deal with everything all at once when this was difficult enough as it was.

I hugged myself, a scared little child, as I wished for my teddy bear. My eyebrows then knitted together. Wait, I had a teddy bear? Yes, yes, I did. It was back home. But where was home? I was so confused. I remembered an image of my mom giving me the teddy bear for my last birthday, then felt a deep wave of sadness at seeing her image in my memory, followed by a wave of guilt. And then… fear.

The hairs on the back of my neck bristled as I knew I was no longer alone, and I spun around to look up into the mocking face of someone I knew all too well, but was not too pleased to see.

"Having fun, Frost?" he said.

Frost. Yes. That was what he called me, right? Because he didn't like me very much, and so we weren't on a first name basis. Jack Frost. That was my name. _Jack Frost?_ I laughed out loud. That was ridiculous. There was no such person as Jack Frost. But who was Jack Frost?

I shook my head to clear all the contradictory questions aside and just focused my attention on the man before me. I did know him, and I was going to deal with him before I dealt with the problems in my mind. "I knew you had something to do with this, Pitch."

Pitch? Who was Pitch? Bitch was a bad word. I was very naughty for saying it. I shook my head. I didn't say Bitch, I said Pitch. His name is Pitch Black. That's a stupid name. No one's actually named Pitch Black. But would I rather if I called him the Boogieman? Now that was just really stupid. There was definitely no such thing as the Boogieman. Oh no, the Boogieman was here to eat me!

I shook my head clear of rampaging thoughts once again as I waited for Pitch to respond to what I'd said, but he only seemed amused. I wasn't so sure how I felt about that. Pitch being amused was never a good thing. "Believe me, Frost," he said, "even I'm not _this_ sadistic." He laughed again, then turned toward me again. "Though I must say that I find myself more amused than I've been about anything in quite a few years."

Wait, did that mean Pitch wasn't responsible? Who else would be capable of this much insanity? Well, obviously Chaos was, but it didn't mean I could comprehend having an insanity level that high.

I narrowed my eyes as I stared at him, placing my hands protectively in front of my body as though trying to shield a little child who was hiding in there. Maybe that was what I actually was doing. I had been merged with a child, right? It was getting hard to remember exactly what had happened. My mind was getting fuzzy, but I still had to deal with this guy before he did any harm. "What are you doing here, Pitch?"

Another laugh emanated from him that sent chills down my spine, and not the kind of chills that result from cold. I whimpered in fright, then promptly rubbed my shoulders to comfort myself. It was okay. I would be okay.

"I thought I would come and lend you a hand, but seeing how you don't seem to want anything to do with me, I'll just be going then."

Part of me wanted to say good riddance as he turned to leave, but an ornery side of my mind suddenly threw my hand up in the air and shouted, "Wait!"

Pitch turned around and raised an eyebrow expectantly. Well, he would have if there had been an eyebrow to raise. The lame-o couldn't even grow eyebrows. "Yes?"

Defeated, I let the part of myself that wanted to know what Pitch was up to take over and run the few steps toward Pitch so I wouldn't have to shout. After catching my breath for a moment, I looked up at him and said, "How can you help me?"

The amused look spread across Pitch's face once again and sent chills down my spine afresh. "I thought you'd never ask," he said, and before I had time to react, he drew up a whip of his nightmare sand and sent it thrashing down upon me, effectively slicing me in half. Then he did it again before I had the chance to get up and run.

I hurt. Every part of my body hurt. I didn't dare open my eyes yet to see the damage, but I did a mental scan of my body and couldn't detect the presence of any nightmares spreading through me, so at least I hadn't been infected by him. He must not have been trying to turn me into a fearling at this point in time. Or perhaps he couldn't. He had lost a lot of power when we had defeated him a couple years ago.

The sudden realization of how clear my thoughts had become made me snap my eyes open and look around. There were three of us again, though his brutal method of cutting us apart had come at the cost of a lot of injury and blood, despite the fact that we all seemed to be healing quickly. How he had ever known that his nightmare sand could separate three people who had merged together like that, I had no idea. And why he had wanted to help in the first place had me even more puzzled.

I struggled to my feet, balancing awkwardly on my staff as pain still coursed its way through my body, but I did my best to pretend it wasn't there. Best if he didn't realize just how weak I had become at his attack. "What do you want, Pitch? I know you're not just trying to be charitable."

He placed his hand over his heart as he made an expression I could only describe as unholy mirth. "Oh, you wound me, Frost. Do you really trust me that little?"

"Yes," I said. No point in denying it. I didn't trust him any farther than I could throw him, and I usually couldn't throw him very far.

"You aren't one to mince words, are you, Frost?"

"Get on with it," I said. "Why are you really here?"

He placed his hands behind his back as he paced, regarding me closely. "Oh, Frost, I'm almost ashamed to say I know you. What else would I be here for?"

I rolled my eyes, mentally kicking myself for not picking up on Pitch's obvious ploy. What else would a defeated spirit of fear be doing in a place like this if not trying to feed off of some rogue fears flying around? There were certainly plenty of fears for the taking. My grip tightened on my staff and I pointed it firmly at him. "You're not messing with these two," I said. "They're under my protection."

He touched the end of my staff and shoved it away as though it was nothing to him. I couldn't say what made me allow him to do so when I could have simply blasted him right then and there. Perhaps the curiosity of the whole situation was getting to me, and he knew that. "You have an interesting way of protecting people."

"Better than you're doing," I said.

"I wouldn't be so sure," he said. "You all might actually fare better by being confronted with your deepest fears while you're here, would you not?"

I growled, probably a habit I would take a while to break after having adopted it in the sound world, and then I pointed decisively at him. "Unless you're planning on helping us get out of this crazy place, then you get out. Unless you're trapped too."

He burst out laughing at this idea and pointed at his chest. "Me? Trapped? Oh, Frost, you can't trap me. I can go anywhere the shadows go. And I had no idea there were this many shadows here. It has proven to be quite… fascinating."

I was about to interrupt with something angry to say again which I would think of after I opened my mouth when Brent interrupted me. "Wait, are you saying this guy can actually show you your greatest fears?"

I looked at Brent, quirked an eyebrow, and then nodded. "He's pretty much fear personified. I and my comrades are constantly fighting to keep him under control."

Without missing a beat, Brent was suddenly on his feet and approaching Pitch. That explained where the side of my mind came from that just ran after Pitch without thinking twice. It had been Brent. Stupid Brent. Didn't he know how bad Pitch was?

Brent looked Pitch hard in the eye, and without flinching, said, "Show me."

"What?!" I shouted, but Pitch merely smirked at me, then turned to Brent and touched a gray finger to the boy's forehead. That was it. Pitch was going too far. I had to stop him. I raised my staff and prepared to send my power through it, and… nothing. I held my staff up to my eyes to inspect it and was surprised to see that it had not frosted over at my touch. Where was my power?

"This boy is interesting, Jack," said Pitch, finally using my first name for some reason. "Would you like to hear about his fears?" I didn't, but there was nothing I could do about it, and I think Pitch knew that somehow. "He is afraid that he is going to wake up after all is said and done only to find that this world, and all he experienced here was all a fantasy. He's afraid that he will either lose the two of you to the recesses of his mind, or that if you really exist, that you'll just ignore him and he'll never see you again. He's afraid that he'll just have to return to his boring life, never to have a friend or witness magic again, because all those who knew him before will deem him crazy after this."

My heart skipped a beat. Brent had come to feel that deeply about us? I'd thought he just wanted me to stop being around since I kept challenging his beliefs about magic. I knew that he was kind of okay with Amanda since one could just write off the things a little kid said about weird things, but I had never had it occur to me that he actually needed us around. Especially considering how mad I tended to make him.

"Allow me to reassure you, Brent," said Pitch, in his menacing voice that he uses when trying to offer false comfort, "Your fears are not unfounded. You will likely never see Jack again after you leave this place. Really, you know you can't believe in Jack Frost and live the life you've been striving toward your entire life. And Amanda is just a child. She'll quickly forget about you. It would be much easier for you to just forget this entire experience."

Brent closed his eyes, and I could see his shoulders begin to heave up and down. Was Brent crying? There was no way… was there? Not tough Brent. What could I do other than shouting at Pitch? I had to do something, but I had no idea what. Like it or not, Brent was still a child, even if an older one, and still under my protection.

Amanda chose this moment to run up to Pitch and shake her finger at him. "You're a naughty, naughty Boogieman! You make Brent cry. Not nice!"

This had the effect of making Pitch burst out laughing, which was not a reaction I'd anticipated, and he removed his hand from Brent's forehead and then… patted Amanda on the head. Without harming her for her little outburst. I scratched my head. What had gotten into him?

"I like this one, Frost. You should take a lesson from her. She knows how to feel her fear all the while acting courageously. As the newest Guardian, you might do well to learn to do the same."

I stepped forward, hoping to get him to stop touching either of the two young people and arrest some attention and respect back my way, since I didn't have my powers to do it with. "Wait, why are you-?"

Without taking the time to hear me out and answer me, he smirked knowingly at me, then waved his hand mysteriously and vanished in a puff of smoke, back to whatever abyss he had come from. I suddenly felt tingly all over and breathed a sigh of relief at the return of power in my blood, but it didn't feel quite right. I held my staff up to my eyes again to check, and shook my head in resignation. I still wasn't frosting it at my touch.

"Well, that was an interesting development." I blinked in complete shock at who I had heard speak those words and spun around to stare at… Amanda? "I do believe this Pitch person was merely coming here to feed off of our latent fear energies, and since we were not a sufficient source of fear for him in his weakened state, he left us alone."

I held my hands up shakily, then slowly backed away from the girl, fear creeping its way up through my veins. Since when does Amanda talk like this? Since when does she even know such words? What was happening to all of us?

"How did you figure all of that out and I didn't?" Amanda and I both turned our heads to see a freaked out Brent, crouched on the ground and holding himself tightly as he rocked himself back and forth as though on the verge of an identity crisis. "You're like, what—six? How are you suddenly smarter than me? I'm the smart one. Me!" I raised an eyebrow and felt a pang of empathy for Brent. He was acting really strange for Brent, though it was no worse than Amanda. And I couldn't say I blamed him for freaking out at having someone else steal his thunder like that.

A cold wind sprung out out of nowhere, and Amanda and I took cover on the ground, both shivering from the effects of this sudden breeze. The cold was bothering me? Since when did that happen? Despite my fear of what had just transpired with Amanda, I decided that it was best to stay alive for now and figure out what was going on later as we both huddled together for warmth.

We weren't joined by Brent in our little circle, which had me puzzled until I turned and saw him sitting there by himself, then I promptly broke down into what could only be described as a childlike tantrum while Amanda tried to comfort me with her strange sudden logic.

Brent was making it snow.

_***chuckles* I loved writing this chapter. Such an interesting writing challenge of writing three people in one body who all thought of it as themselves. Never had to do that before. This story has stretched my writing skills farther than I've ever had to stretch them before. That's a good thing, I think. I hope, haha.**_

_**Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts. I love your reviews. I sorry I'm not responding directly to many of you yet, but I have very limited time at the library, and my phone doesn't have enough juice to allow me to respond to you. But hey, you got this chapter quickly because of your awesome reviews, so that means they're not going to waste, right? *snickers***_

_**Take care, everybody, and see you next time!**_


	7. Mixed Up Chaos

_**Hey, guys, sorry I didn't get a chapter submitted last week. Couldn't get to the library. But I do have some good news. I finally have internet at my house! Yeah! So it won't be so hard to keep uploading chapters now! Whoo!**_

_**I also got this anon review that I thought I should address:**_

From: Spud (Guest)

Spud:*Spirit.  
Not fairy.

_**I understand the confusion here since the fandom has kind of latched onto the term "spirit" at the exclusion of everything else, but there is no basis for doing this according to the legends themselves. The word "spirit" is a really ambiguous term in the English language and can mean so many different things, so I prefer to avoid that word whenever possible.**_

_**In the legends, Jack tends to usually be depicted as either a fairy (a winter sprite, a type of fairy), or a god. Both are different types of spirits. Most of the time when a legendary being has a discrepancy between whether they're considered a fairy or a god, they get downgraded to fairy for some reason. I'm not entirely sure why, but that's what I've been seeing over and over again, so I followed suit and labeled Jack a fairy as well. I'm more familiar with fairies than gods anyway.**_

_**But yes, fairy equals nature spirit, which is a kind of spirit. Most people would agree that Jack is definitely a spirit of nature, hence the usage of the word "fairy" isn't wrong, even though there were several other words I could have chosen. It's just the word I prefer, and the way he's addressed in all my fanfics.**_

_**Anyway, that out of the way, I hope you all enjoy the chapter!**_

_**Disclaimer: Just checked and I still don't own Jack or anything else within ROTG. Though granted, no one owns Jack. He wouldn't let them. Dreamworks just borrowed him for ROTG. *chuckles***_

"What's happening to me?" Brent shouted as he stared at his hands in utter terror. I didn't know how to answer him, as I couldn't find the words to express myself that I was used to having. Either Chaos or Pitch took them away from me and gave them to Brent. And and then they took Brent's words and gave them to Amanda, leaving her the most articulate of the three of us. Yet she was the least likely one to be able to explain this situation, but one could always hope.

"Has Chaos switched our powers between us?" said Amanda.

I shrugged, still sobbing like a baby out of fear and frustration. I wasn't sure if this was a trick of Chaos trying to break us again, or of Pitch trying to elicit more fear from us. Either way, the plan seemed to be working. I was terrified of giving up my powers to Brent, and I hadn't the slightest idea how to live with a child's mindset, despite how often I'd insisted upon being a child in times past. Now I strangely wanted nothing more than to be able to grow up, and grow up quickly.

I wrapped my arms around my legs as I curled into a tight little ball. "I wish mamma was here."

"Well, your mamma isn't here, Jack, so you're going to have to figure out what to do about this situation," said Brent as he stood up and strode over to me, swinging his arms back and forth huffily. "Come on, snap out of it. We don't have all day!" The cold picked up and whipped at my face as Brent spat his words at me, and I buried my face further into my knees, whining even louder. Our abilities may have gotten swapped, but our personalities sure hadn't. I would never have spoken to him like that.

"Come _on_, Jack!" He gave me a swift kick to the shin, causing me to yelp in surprise and then scramble away from him before he could think of something else mean to do. "You're the only one who ever seems to understand all this hocus pocus stuff we've been going through since we got here, so stop acting like a kid and figure this out!"

It was as good as having a death sentence dropped upon me, because I couldn't think of a thing in this condition. Not to mention that Brent was just plain terrifying to me in my current state. What little resolve I still retained melted away right then into a full fledged tantrum. I knew Brent would be furious with me for this behavior since Jack was still in me somewhere, but I couldn't get past the child, which only made the tantrum escalate even more quickly once it started.

Thankfully, before Brent could raise his voice again, Amanda stepped in front of me and spread her arms out protectively, shielding me with her body. "Stop your bullying, Brent. Can't you tell he's just as helpless as we are? All of us have been switched, and he clearly inherited his traits from me and doesn't know how to deal with it."

"But he needs to stop!" Brent flailed his arms, seeming to grow more frantic with each pump, a gesture that was reflected in the intensity of the snowfall around him. "He needs to tell me what to do. Why do I have his powers? Why couldn't I have been switched with you instead if we had to switch?"

Amanda shook her head, closing her eyes solemnly as she attempted to remain calm and be the smart one of us three. It was a relief that someone was managing to keep their head through all of this, but I felt a pang of guilt lurch in my stomach at the notion that it was Amanda, of all people. I was supposed to be protecting her, not the other way around. Yet here I was, debilitated by a childish fit that I had no control over.

"I don't know why we switched the way we did, Brent. I would venture a guess that either Chaos or that Pitch guy is getting a huge laugh out of this."

Brent's emotional weather patterns spiked yet again, causing both me and Amanda to shiver and cling to each other for warmth. Upon seeing this reaction, Brent started chewing on his fingernails in his worry, and the weather got even more harsh. "But what do I _do?_ I don't know how to control Jack's powers. I could end up killing you!"

He made a very good point. My powers were deadly in the wrong hands, which was why I was panicking so much in the first place. The realization that Brent was aware of this made me calm down just a bit, and I whispered just loud enough for Amanda to hear. "M-My st-st-st-staff."

"What?" She leaned closer to me and cup her hand around her ear.

I gulped and tried again. "G-Give him m-my s-s-sta-aff."

She pulled away and looked at me quizzically for a moment, as though trying to confirm a mystery in her mind. "Your staff?"

I nodded and sniffled, then shivered as yet another gust of chilly wind roped its way around the two of us. She didn't waste any more time, even though I was sure she was confused as to why I was giving such an order, and she grabbed my staff. I was glad she'd obeyed me, even without understanding the reason. It just went to show how much she trusted me. I hoped I would never violate that trust.

A moment later, she slapped the staff into Brent's hand, and it instantly frosted over, a sight that made my stomach drop two miles down. My staff wasn't supposed to respond that way to anyone but me. Still, upon seeing the reaction he had with the staff, Brent then gripped it with both hands and started repeating some sort of silent mantra that I guessed was supposed to direct his energy through the staff, and little by little, the storm calmed down. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

"I did it!" he said, actually jumping in place a moment in celebration. "Me, the computer geek, actually controlled magic!" Both Amanda and I found the irony in that situation rather funny and lost ourselves to a round of chuckling despite ourselves. Upon quieting down again, Brent faced us with another question.

"What if—What if one of us needs to fly while we're switched like this? How—How would I—?" His voice trailed off as he looked off into the distance. Apparently he couldn't even bring himself to voice the thought that he possibly could fly through magic. Though I figured that if he could conjure up a storm and then calm it back down, that he could learn to fly too. But how well he would do at it, we would have to wait and see.

"You just—ask," I said, shaking my head and growling in frustration that I couldn't come up with better words to say. I'm not normally the most articulate person in the world, but I usually at least have more words at my disposal than I did at present.

Brent raised an eyebrow as he looked at me. "You ask who?"

"The wind," I said, and I raised my head to look up at him timidly. He looked skeptical and kind of perturbed at my sudden lack of any sort of eloquent speech, but after a moment of staring, decided to just shrug it off and see what happened.

"Alright," he said, and he pointed my staff at the air. "Um… wind? Make me fly."

I assume he expected nothing to happen, which made the next moment hysterical as the wind swam down and scooped him up and began tossing him around like a rag doll as he yelped in surprise. I laughed so hard that tears started running down my face. None of my tears were freezing to my face for once, which was a huge relief, so I laughed all the more and just let the tears run. Brent wasn't too happy with me for laughing instead of helping, but I didn't care. The situation was just too funny.

"Alright, you little monkey," Brent called from somewhere above me, still spiraling out of control at the wind's delight. "How do I get down?"

I continued laughing as I just shrugged and shook my head. There was no way I knew to teach someone how to fly well. After a while, one just learned how to communicate with the wind. There was no rapid way to teach that.

"Why you little-" he started to shout, then seemed to get an idea in his head as he turned and said, "Wind, put me down."

Well, I give him credit for one thing: he at least knew how to state his intention clearly enough for the wind to understand. He hadn't realized just how literal the wind tends to be though, as he was suddenly smacked face first onto the face of the earth, creating a cloud of dust in his wake that caused Amanda and I to choke.

After a couple minutes of him just lying there, groaning in pain, he finally pushed himself up, glared at me, then rolled his eyes and said, "I think from now on, I'll leave the flying to you."

I was fine with that, and my childish giggles as a result seemed to convey how I felt about this well enough for him to understand.

We sat in place for several minutes as we tried to calm down from the insanity that had transpired in such close succession for us over the last few challenges. We hadn't had a break to just catch our breath, and we still weren't being cut a break. But at least we weren't assuming we would die if we took a few minutes to chill in our current state. Well, except for Brent who was a little hotter than he was accustomed to, but he seemed fine otherwise, despite his whining about it.

Finally, Amanda had apparently decided she'd had enough of this nonsense, and she jumped to her feet and turned her face to the sky, raising her little voice high enough to be loud and clear for what I assumed to be miles all around. "Alright, Chaos, you've put us through enough of this nonsense, and I expect some answers."

Both Brent and I blinked at the sudden bravado the little girl displayed, neither of us sure what to think. She was acting like an adult, even though she was clearly still just a six-year-old, and I knew our personalities hadn't shifted with our abilities. It left me amazed at what kind of person Amanda really was deep inside if being given Brent's intelligence could bring this level of strength out of her. She was going to grow up into someone amazing… if we could just get out of this crazy place.

We sat and waited for a time, half expecting an angry retort from Chaos at being addressed this way, and half expecting him to not answer at all. It turned out to be the latter, which him completely ignoring Amanda. This wasn't okay by her, and she shouted once again. "I mean it, Chaos! We could seriously die here, and I can tell by the way you've made sure that none of us have died thus far despite insurmountable obstacles that you don't really want us dead. Now answer me, unless you want one or all of us to die from your negligence."

Ouch. Those words were harsh, and I found myself involuntarily wincing. I would hate to be on the receiving end of those words. And she did have a point. I didn't know how we'd managed to survive all those other obstacles, especially considering that I had actually managed to sort of die once. Yet here we all were, still very much alive. Maybe he wasn't actually trying to kill us.

"Amanda, stop. Please stop."

Brent and I both looked at each other, then looked back over at Amanda, shock written on all of our faces. That request hadn't come from any of us. It had come from Chaos, and it had sounded a bit choked up. But whatever for?

"No!" she said, stamping her little foot. "I won't stop until you tell me what's going on. Why did you switch our powers?"

A moment of silence passed as we all held our breath, waiting for a response to come, and hoping none of us would be punished for her outspokenness. Finally, the voice of Chaos came rumbling over the hills once again. "I didn't do that."

Amanda was quick to ask, "Who did?" but Brent and I were already staring at each other as the pieces clicked into place. If Chaos hadn't switched us, then that meant that Pitch had. And if Pitch had the ability to switch our powers, then that meant that Chaos wasn't in complete control. Which meant…

I reached out with my mind toward Brent, holding my hand in position as though grasping for something intangible. He seemed to catch onto what I was doing and mirrored me. A spark passed between us, and I grasped onto that spark and pulled hard, feeling a familiar electric surge pass through my body. I fell over from the impact and then started into a fit of giggles out of sheer relief as the warmth left my body and was replaced by the familiar feeling of cold. I had summoned my powers back. On my own.

After regaining control of myself, I sat up and looked over at Brent, who was hunched over like a scared puppy, eyes darting between me and Amanda. He hugged himself and whimpered, and I sighed sympathetically, realizing that he had taken on Amanda's traits rather than summoning back his own. I wondered why, since it had seemed like he'd had the same realization I had.

A glance back at Amanda made me realize why. She'd never had the ability to vocalize her thoughts like this before, and because of this, she was getting to Chaos. Brent wanted her to continue doing so for a while. I got to my feet, picked up my staff from Brent, and went and stood by Amanda, looking up at the same patch of sky she was staring at. If Chaos were to try anything, I wanted to be there to protect her. Brent crawled over after me and latched onto my leg, a timid child afraid to be left alone.

"Look, Amanda," said Chaos once again, "your friends have figured out how to get their own powers back. Why don't you return to normal?"

"Because then I wouldn't be able to talk to you very well, and you know it!" Amanda's eyes shone with a fury I never would have guessed a six-year-old could possess. It made me jump slightly, but the Brent leech on my leg wouldn't let me move very far.

"Please, Amanda, just stop," Chaos begged. "I'm just evil. Just accept that and try to save yourself."

Amanda shook her head, then placed her hands on her hips in defiance, a gesture that's hilarious for a normal six-year-old, but was strangely intimidating on this one at this time. "If you were truly evil, you wouldn't be trying so desperately to convince us that you were, now would you? Why do you need us to think you're evil, Chaos?"

"Amanda, please!" If I wasn't mistaken, it sounded like Chaos was starting to cry. But Chaos didn't cry, did he? Wasn't he just heartless and sadistic? How was Amanda making him react like this? "It's just easier if you let me be the villain. Please just go. You're running out of time."

At this point, I decided to step forward and see if I could get a word in with Chaos myself, even though it was Amanda who had made him crack. Still, the fact that he'd cracked in front of all of us might mean I could get something more out of him, even if I wasn't the brilliant Amanda with Brent's stolen genius. "How are we running out of time?" I said.

I hadn't expected Chaos to react kindly to my butting in, but neither had I expected the sudden blast of stormy wind to my face that nearly bowled me over. "Why must you always butt in, Jack? Must you destroy everything you touch?"

Now that wasn't fair. I didn't even know what I was being accused of, and I sent a death glare toward the empty sky, more determined than ever now to figure out Chaos's secrets. "I beg your pardon," I said, "I do not destroy everything I touch. I still have these two alive and well, don't I?" I gestured to the boy and girl beside me, and gave a nod for further emphasis.

The stormy wind only increased in strength, blowing so fiercely that I had to plant my staff in the ground and cling to it in order to continue standing upright. "You don't even know what you're talking about, Jack! You know nothing! Nothing!"

"Then tell me what I don't know!" I yelled back. The wind stopped abruptly, but Chaos didn't respond. I wasn't sure if he was ever going to, but he had certainly revealed a lot to me in our small interaction. This guy wasn't just being sadistic like I had assumed, and he wasn't a complete stranger, at least not from his point of view. It seemed I'd offended him somehow, and all this must have been some sort of payment on my part. I still hadn't the foggiest idea what all this had to do with Brent and Amanda though.

My little spat with Chaos seemed to have been enough for Amanda to think through things in her head, and she stepped forward again and addressed the sky. "Chaos, when you say we're running out of time… do you mean we're dying?"

The silence that answered her question caused all three of us to shiver with fear. It was the clearest response Chaos had given yet.

_**Started dropping some big hints in this chapter. Anyone know what's going on yet? More hints will be dropped in the next chapter too, which I'll make sure to upload soon.**_

_**Reviews would be lovely. Feel free to talk about anything you like in your review. I'm really not picky, but the reviews help the story rating so much. I'll try to actually start responding to people again now that I have internet too. You guys have been so awesome to me through all of this and you deserve that much at least. :)**_

_**Take care, and have a lovely day! See you all next time!**_


	8. Lest We All Die

_**Hey, guys! Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy! :)**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own ROTG.**_

Leaving the interaction with Chaos left us all more confused than ever. Brent had summoned his powers of intelligence back from Amanda since he needed to be able to process his surroundings to stay sane, and Amanda gratefully went back into her naive oblivion. That was strangely relieving to me. A six-year-old didn't deserve to face up to the things she had already faced up to in her young life.

Who was Chaos? How much control did the three of us have in this strange land? Where was the way out of this place? What was Chaos really trying to do? Why couldn't he face Amanda? It didn't seem like he was inclined to answer any of these questions, but it was no time before we were onto our next challenge.

The tone of this new challenge was with a more somber tone than I'd ever heard Chaos speak. It was reminiscent of a balloon that had been punctured with a pin and was slowly losing altitude. Something about Amanda approaching him like that had really wounded him, but what?

"Think carefully over this next challenge," said Chaos, who then sighed sadly. We all looked before us at a table spread out with a variety of potions in various colors and shapes of containers. "Some of these are poison, some of these will trap you here forever, but one will get you out."

"Out?" I said, blinking in surprise. "Like out of this land, out? Out back into our proper lives?"

"Yes," said Chaos. "All the way out."

Amanda whimpered and spoke with tears tainting her voice. "Can't you just tell us which one it is, Mr. Chaos?"

The same teary voice met her back, rolling over the ether. "I-I'm sorry, Amanda. I can't." We were then left in silence as Chaos refused to speak any longer, and I had to console a sobbing Amanda. It almost seemed like she was starting to get attached to Chaos for some reason, though I couldn't fathom why. He certainly seemed to have gotten attached to her.

Brent dismissed us with a flick of his hand. "You guys just stay cool. I've got this." I nodded that he should just continue on with what he knew best, and he began ransacking the display of potions, picking up vials, shaking them, sniffing them, and all around doing pretty much everything but tasting them. I hadn't the foggiest idea how he was discerning anything about them with just the information he had, but as I watched him continue to sort the various potions apart, I had to hand it to him. Somehow he still had enough information to do what needed to be done.

"There!" said Brent as he set the last vial down in the place he'd assigned to that kind of potion on the table. He wiped the sweat off his brow. "That's the last of them."

My eyebrows shot up in expectation. "So you know the one that'll get us out?" I said.

He bit his lip, a worrying expression that wasn't supposed to come over Brent after he'd just solved a tough puzzle. Something was wrong.

"Yes and no," he said. "I found it, but…"

I jumped to my feet. "But what? What could possibly be wrong with finding it?"

He picked up the vial in question and held it up for me to see, and I groaned as I took the situation in. The vial was the smallest one in the entire arrangement on the table, and held only enough potion for one person to take a gulp, meaning that it would send one person back home, and no more. Either Chaos was teasing us, or Chaos was giving us two puzzles for the price of one.

"What do we do?" I asked Brent. He shrugged.

"Seems the only thing we can do is figure out who we're sending back, and who's staying behind."

"No!" shrieked Amanda, and she ran up and threw her arms around my waist, squeezing so hard she nearly pressed all the air out of me. "Stay together. Chaos said."

"We don't take our orders from Chaos, Amanda," said Brent, and he continued staring at the vial in question as I reached down to try and console Amanda again.

"It's okay, snowflake. We'll get you out of here. I promise."

"All of us." She squeezed my waist even tighter. "Get all of us out."

I glanced uneasily between her and the vial in Brent's hand, unsure as to whether I could keep such a promise if I made it, but I certainly wanted to promise that. Still, I couldn't lie to her. If I couldn't promise that we would all be safe, I wasn't going to say we were. Instead, I settled on, "W-We'll try."

"Noooo! Promise!" She leapt up and down in her fervor to get the response she desired of me, but I just went mute. I had no idea how I was to accomplish what she wanted, and I couldn't bring myself to make a false promise.

After a while of allowing Amanda to assault me like this, Brent finally spoke again. "I think I know what to do."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "You do?"

He nodded hesitantly. "I think—I-I think we need to send one of us out. A-And then that person can go and get help to get the other two out of here."

"What?!" I didn't like the sound of this plan at all. I stumbled backward a couple steps, dragging a startled Amanda with me. "Who would you be thinking to send out?"

Brent sighed, then cast his gaze down at the ground for a moment, as though knowing his response wouldn't be met with much enthusiasm. He cleared his throat. "You."

I had to do a double take at that. "Wait, what? Me? Why me?"

He looked back up at me, a transparent look in his eyes through which I could see every pain he had ever encountered in his lifetime. "Because," he said, "you have abilities neither of us have. If you leave, you could get help—magical help—and then find a way back in to rescue us."

I shook my head adamantly. This was not a worthy plan. Even though Brent had been right in his logical deductions thus far, I was drawing the line on this one. "No. Absolutely not. I can't guarantee anything since I don't even know how I got in here in the first place."

"But—"

"No!" I said. "If only one of us can get out, send Amanda. She's still young and deserves a chance to live out the rest of her life."

"But if you go, all three of us have a chance to get out!" His voice rose up a notch, and his fist that was clenched around the vial began to shake. "You've always trusted my reasoning ability before. Why doubt me now?"

"Because I know my own limits better than you, Brent. Even with all the magic on Earth at my disposal I couldn't guarantee I'd ever be able to find a way back in here. I don't even know where here is."

"You're still the best shot we have."

"And it's a very slim shot at that!" I crossed my arms and turned my head away. "No, Amanda goes. I'm not going to be the reason that a child stays trapped in this crazy place forever."

"Newsflash, Frost boy, but we're _all _children, or haven't you noticed?"

I hmphed and turned my head back to look directly at him. "I'm a three hundred something child, and you're in your teens. Amanda's a little girl. The two of us can handle staying here if we have to, but don't subject a little girl to that fate!"

"If you would just listen to me—"

Whatever he was about to say, I never found out, because Amanda spontaneously released my waist and grabbed the vial out of Brent's shaking hand. Then, before either of us had a chance to react, she threw it on the ground, shattering the vial before our very eyes. As we helplessly watched the liquid drain away that could have saved at least one of us, she turned around with hands firmly on her hips, looking almost as intimidating as she had when she'd had Brent's ability with words.

"Stop fighting! We're in this together!"

I blinked, surprised at the sudden display of anger directed at us from the little thing, especially since I'd been fighting on her behalf. "But—"

"No!" She stomped her foot, causing both Brent and I to take a step backward. "Chaos said stay together. We stay together."

I couldn't do anything but nod in silence at her words, feeling thoroughly chastised by this little girl who was quickly proving herself to be wiser and braver than myself. Brent hid his face as he rubbed his arms for comfort. It seemed Amanda's words had cut him deep too. This little girl seemed to be able to whip anyone into shape. Even the Boogieman. Even Chaos.

I hung my head sadly, not knowing what else we would be able to do now that our one way out had been taken from us, but not wanting to screw up again in front of her. "I'm sorry, Amanda," I said. "We'll stay together. I promise."

She shook her finger at me. "You better!" Then she directed her attention at Brent. "You better too!"

He sighed and hung his head as well, then shrugged as he resigned himself to his fate. "Alright, I promise too."

She nodded, satisfied, then reached out to take one of each of our hands in hers as she led us out of the room with the table and onto adventures unknown. And Chaos didn't seem inclined to punish us for it.

* * *

I wish I could say that trouble left us alone for a while, but it seemed that the longer we spent in this strange land, the shorter the time between one bout of trouble and another occurred. Chaos was right. Time was ticking, though I hadn't the slightest idea what was making us run out of time. Were we getting sick and hadn't realized it yet? Was the land infected with poison? Was the food or water contaminated?

That last thought made me stop in my tracks as it occurred to me how strange it was. "Guys," I said, which made them both stop walking and turn to look at me. "How long do you think we've been here?"

Brent raised his eyebrow at me. "A few minutes?"

I shook my head, knowing he'd missed my question by a mile. "No, not _here _here. I meant this land… of Chaos."

"Oh," said Brent, who I guessed was suddenly feeling stupid for missing such a simple question. He scratched the back of his head as he thought. "I don't know. Time's been kind of weird. Maybe a few days? Or a few weeks?"

I nodded at this, as I'd been suspecting this too. "And how much have either of you eaten?"

The haunted expression on Brent's face was enough to clue me in that my suspicions were right on the mark. Somehow, through all we'd been through in this land, none of us had ever thought to stop and eat or drink. And our bodies didn't seem to be complaining about it either.

"What about sleep?" I said. "Am I forgetting something, or have neither of you slept since coming here?"

Brent shot a look at Amanda, who looked back at him in confused oblivion, bless her little soul. At least she didn't have to fathom how puzzling this ordeal truly was. Brent gulped on whatever saliva he had in his mouth, but it sounded like he didn't have enough to do the job. "We…" he said, "we haven't… eaten or slept since coming here."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "And your body's not complaining about this?" He shook his head slowly, looking for all the world like he had just seen a ghost. I sighed and rubbed at my forehead, feeling like a migraine was bound to come on any second now.

"Well," I said, "Either the both of you have somehow become immortal like me, or…" I sighed, looked up at the heavens, then closed my eyes. "Or this place never existed to begin with."

Brent's eyebrows shot up. "Like a hallucination?"

I placed my hand across my chest, silently giving into Brent's fantasies about this place. It was the only thing that made sense to me. "Yeah," I said. "Like you'd originally thought. Maybe you were right after all."

For some reason, he didn't seem to be so fond of my telling him that he was right. His arms shot out in a gesture of distress. "But what are we all doing in the same hallucination then, huh? Are you trying to tell me the two of you aren't real?"

I held my hands up in front of me and took a couple steps back. He'd sure gone from calm to freaked out in an awfully short amount of time. "Whoa, Brent, I didn't say anything like that. Remember that I've been roped into this too, which means there's magic involved, which might explain the group hallucination. I just don't know how it happened."

"Care for a little assistance in figuring that out?"

The three of us whirled around at the sound of that voice, fear automatically pricking at each one of us as was evidenced by the looks on everyone's faces. We all knew that voice by now. Pitch had returned.

I narrowed my eyes and glared at the intruder. "What are you doing here again, Pitch?"

Pitch feigned a deep emotional wound as he placed his hand over his heart and staggered under the weight of it. "Oh, Frost, you'll let random little ragamuffins wander all about this countryside and you won't even let me pop in for a visit?"

"What do you want?" I wasn't about to let him divert the conversation. The best way to deal with this guy was to cut to the chase and get it over with quickly.

"What do you think I want, Frost?" He placed his hands behind his back and strolled casually in front of us, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that we were still watching. "You know me well enough by now, don't you? What do I always want?"

"Fear," I said matter-of-factly.

"And not just any fear," he said. "Yours is particularly delicious, especially when you find yourself trapped in a land that is more confusing than anything you've ever dreamed of."

I sighed and rubbed my forehead again. It was just as I'd feared. He was indeed feeding off of our fears to regain his strength. Especially mine. This couldn't be good. I had no way to contact the other Guardians to tell them where I was, and Pitch had free reign to do whatever he wanted to me to make my fears escalate until he was strong enough to return to our world. I didn't know how I was going to convince him into leaving this place, but I had to do something.

"Isn't it something?" he said, still strolling around in a gloating fashion. "And here you'd almost found your way out of here too. Pity it didn't work." The smirk he directed my way told me clearly what he really thought. He loved that I was a sitting duck here. Maybe I should have taken that potion after all if it would have protected all the rest of the children of the world, though that thought left a pang of guilt about leaving Amanda and Brent behind to fend for themselves.

It seemed Amanda had had enough, and she stormed up to Pitch and shook her finger at him once again. "You leave Jack alone! Chaos will let us out, and then you'll be sorry, Mr. Meanie!"

Once again, Pitch burst out laughing at Amanda's display of bravado, and he turned back to face me. "Really, Frost, your pets are adorable, but I'm afraid the little dear is sadly ignorant of what's really going on here."

I crossed my arms and glared, hoping to make myself look as intimidating as possible, though I wasn't sure it would actually work against someone like Pitch. "Really?" I said. "Care to enlighten us, oh wise one?"

Pitch smirked, and I'd almost wished I hadn't said such a thing. This wasn't going to turn out so well for us, I was sure. He casually strolled up to Brent and looked him squarely in the eye. "Think about it, Jack. Who was it who knew all along that this was a hallucinatory world? Who was the first to figure out that the three of you could control happenings here as well as this 'Chaos' you speak of? Who despised you from day one and tried to be rid of you? Think about it, Jack. It's not that hard to see."

A hand flew to my mouth as I realized what Pitch was implying. That was impossible. Brent couldn't be Chaos. Could he? I shook my head. No. Chaos was too powerful. It couldn't be Brent. It couldn't be. Though Brent hadn't liked me when we'd first shown up here. That was the truth. But still.

I glared at Pitch, then swung my staff as I sent a wave of frost his way. "Don't you talk to my friend that way!"

Pitch merely sidestepped the blast and burst out laughing. He clasped his hands as he stared at me mockingly. "Oh, Frost, you really are much too fun. You truly do fit your title, don't you?" I growled and knashed my teeth together as he strolled amusedly in front of us once again. "You're so quick to call people your friends because you only recently started to have people around to call friends. Yet you don't even fathom what a friend is. Are you sure Brent is your friend, Jack, really? You know friend and fiend only have a one letter difference."

"Shut up!" I swung my staff at him again to blast him with ice, but he once again dodged it. I couldn't even get close to him, which was odd. Normally I at least had a fighting chance with this guy. How was he able to predict my moves so well? Then again, if this was all a hallucinatory world, wouldn't the Nightmare King be right at home here? No wonder he could come and go as he pleased and know how to mess with things before we were aware we could do the same.

Something about that thought went ricocheting through my mind as I processed the extent of it, then it came bouncing back with something I hadn't thought of before. If Pitch could come and go in this world, then so could…

"Sandy!" I blurted out before I realized what I was doing. Amanda and Brent gave me funny looks at this randomness of mine, and I coughed awkwardly into my hand before I tried to explain. "He's a colleague of mine. I-I just realized… he can come and go wherever Pitch goes. If we can call him…"

"…Then your friend could come and help us drive Pitch off," said Brent. "You don't have to tell me twice. Sandy, was it?"

I nodded, and Brent immediately started shouting Sandy's name. I got Amanda doing it too before I joined in my voice with theirs. Surely he would hear if three of us were calling. Pitch did not look happy that we had thought of this and started spewing garbage about how Sandy wouldn't hear us while we were trapped in this world, but I didn't believe it. If Pitch could find us, so could Sandy.

My hopes were soon realized as a whirlwind of golden sand dropped from the sky, quickly forming into the little golden man I had come to know so well. I smiled and breathed a happy sigh of relief, while Brent jumped backward, startled. I guessed he hadn't expected Sandy to look the way he did, but at least he wasn't as terrifying as Pitch.

Sandy quickly sized up the situation with Pitch, and the two instantly locked into an all out magical brawl of flinging various shapes and sizes of black and golden sand back and forth. I raised up my staff to join in the fight and help Sandy have a better chance of winning, but found that my power kept short circuiting and would not come out of the staff no matter how hard I pushed it. I tried dropping my staff onto the ground to see if letting my power go without my staff to control it would help, but I could barely frost the ground beneath my feet.

I didn't know what was happening with my powers, but the more Pitch and Sandy fought, the more it felt like I was being electrocuted. Brent and Amanda didn't seem to be faring too well either, though I didn't have a chance to examine the extent of the damage being inflicted on them as I suddenly dropped to the ground and grabbed my head as a raging headache throbbed through it. I lost control and screamed. What was happening to me?

After that, I lost track of time or the battle. I had no idea who was winning or losing, and I had no idea how Amanda and Brent were holding up to all of this. I only knew that something about the fight affected me and left me powerless. And that I was not very happy about that fact.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point, I found myself collapsed into a sobbing mess, and I haven't the foggiest idea how long I stayed that way. I only knew when a golden hand reached into my field of vision and grasped my hand to pull me up into a sitting position. I allowed Sandy to pull me up, despite how weak I felt. I felt like I had fought a battle of my own, even though I had just sat on the sidelines, bawling like a baby.

I wearily looked over to where Brent and Amanda sat, and saw that they were both worse for wear too. The battle had drained all three of us, and I felt another sob escape at that realization. I'd had no idea that would happen.

Still, Sandy had saved us from Pitch, and I wearily nodded in his direction and muttered a weak, "Thanks."

He smiled and patted my shoulder. _Of course, Jack. It was the least I could do._

I did a double take and nearly fell over again from dizziness. Had Sandy just spoken aloud? I'd never heard his voice in my life. He'd always just communicated via sand symbols above his head, and never with his voice. Something about being afraid of waking up a child by speaking.

He seemed to sense what was going on in my head as he laughed silently and then turned back to face me. _I'm not speaking aloud, Jack. This is telepathy._

I raised my eyebrow about as far up my forehead as it would go. "Telepathy?" I said. I then shook my head. "I didn't even know you could do that."

Sandy shrugged dismissively. _It only works under certain conditions._

I then nodded, finally starting to get it. "And I guess this is one of those conditions." Sandy nodded in response, and I relaxed. He was still the same old Sandy I'd always known, even if I was finally seeing this power of his for the first time, which was incredibly weird. Why hadn't he ever shown it to me before? It could have been useful to know he could sometimes communicate telepathically, though I grant that I had no idea what the special conditions for his ability were.

Not wanting to waste this opportunity, now that I'd finally gotten in touch with one of the other Guardians, I grasped one of Sandy's wrists and said, "Sandy, you've got to tell the other Guardians we're trapped here. We're being tormented by this guy named Chaos, and we don't know how to get out. And now he's saying we're running out of time, and I don't know what he means."

A look of shock, followed by a look of sadness, spread across Sandy's face. I thought he would react in some way like being angry at Chaos for trapping us here and treating us badly and blah blah blah, but he didn't do any of that. Instead, he placed his hand on my head and rubbed my hair affectionately, then inclined his head toward me. _You have no idea what's happening here?_

I shook my head. "No! I have no idea how I got stuck in this crazy world, and I have no idea how to get any of us out." Then, as I watched Sandy's face, something clicked in my mind. "Wait… you know something, don't you?"

Sandy bowed his head sadly and then nodded, and I decided right then and there to spring on that faint ray of hope. "What's going on, Sandy? Please, you've got to tell me!" I shook his wrist as I spoke, hoping to drive the message home. "Please!"

His sad look only grew sadder as he looked from me to Amanda to Brent, then he turned back to me. _I need to go and talk to the others before I try to explain anything to you. But I'll keep an eye on you from now on to ensure Pitch doesn't return. _

Sandy then pulled his wrist out of my grasp and conjured up a massive sand cloud that raised him up, and soon he was out of my reach, since I was still too weak to use my powers. "Wait, Sandy!" I reached up as far as I could, but he was already quite a few feet over my head. "Wait, come back! Sandy! Please help us, Sandy!"

He didn't come back, but as he disappeared from view, I felt a few small sand forms fall down around me. As I looked at them, I could have sworn they looked like tears.

_**...And the plot thickens.**_

_**Also, thought I should probably mention something that I thought was obvious, though I guess looking at things that it's not. *chuckles* All these chapters are written, and I'd be happy to upload them all quickly one after another if it doesn't kill the review count since people actually search by reviews nowadays. I want anyone who needs this story in the future to be able to find it.**_

_**Which means that if you'd like me to upload the rest of the chapters really quickly, just leave me some reviews. I don't really care how many, just some. Otherwise I'll keep doing the one chapter a week thing. You'll still get your chapters either way, but if you want them faster, it's possible.**_

_**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that. See you all next time, whenever next time happens to be. Take care!**_


	9. Must You Embarrass Me?

_**Wow, I got four reviews yesterday from you wonderful people! *hugs* That's pretty phenomenal considering that this story has a hard time getting hits. Back in my most popular days on Fanfiction, I used to consider myself lucky to get one review for every ten hits. Yesterday though was the first time I ever got one review for LESS than ten hits on average! I didn't even know that could be done. Thank you! *hugs again***_

_**So here's the next chapter, updated quickly as promised. Hope you all enjoy. :)**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own ROTG. Aaaaand, I don't think I have enough creativity to write a creative disclaimer. Whatevs. You came to read the story anyway, haha.**_

There was something even more terrifying than being tormented by Chaos, and it was happening right next to me, though I didn't realize how scary it was at the time. All I noticed was that Brent seemed to be in a mood. Apparently he was lost in thought about something. I would soon learn not to allow him to do that for too long.

The three of us strolled along in some random direction for a while, none of us talking to each other except when Amanda would periodically comment on the scenery and demand a response from either of us. Otherwise, we had nothing we wanted to say. I was too busy trying to figure out what Sandy knew that he wouldn't tell, and Brent was thinking about who knew what. What I wouldn't have given to be Amanda right then, just able to take in the surroundings and somewhat enjoy herself despite what was going on around us.

"Jack," Brent said after quite some time of silence. I didn't acknowledge him, but he chose to continue speaking anyway. "That guy back there, the gray one… Pitch, was it?" I nodded, so he continued his speech. "Why does he call you 'Frost'?"

I shrugged, not really caring about the overly simplistic question when there were more important things to worry about. "It's just my name."

He was quick to pounce on that. "But I thought Jack was your name."

"Well, it is." My throat caught itself in a momentary stammer before I could conjure up more words to use to respond to Brent. Why was I suddenly so awkward? And why did Brent sound so accusatory? "Don't you have a last name?"

"Yep," he said, slyly dodging the question and not choosing to answer the unasked question of what that last name was. "But Frost is definitely not yours. Either that, or Jack isn't your first name."

Now this was getting annoying. I knew what he was getting at now, but I really didn't have time for this skeptical nonsense. I was too busy trying to figure out how to keep us all alive. He could question my identity another day. I rolled my eyes and turned to glare at him. "Look, I respect the fact that you're a skeptic, but can you please at least show a little respect to the guy who's trying to save your freaking life?"

Brent's mouth closed with an audible clap, and I snorted and stormed on ahead of the two of them. I didn't literally cause a storm to flare up, but I certainly felt like there was one inside of me at the moment, and I was striving to keep it from coming out. It was one thing for people to constantly argue that I didn't exist, but it was quite another for someone to say it to my face.

"Geez, man! I just want to know who I'm accompanying is all. Sheesh." I turned back and saw Brent pouting with his arms crossed as he stumbled forward. He'd sure recovered control of his mouth quickly. "It just seems awfully convenient that I crash in a snow storm and then wake up in a strange land with the girl in the other car and Jack Frost. I want to think I'm not making you guys up. But seriously, Jack Frost? Come on."

I trembled slightly as I stared at Brent, my jaw unhinging slightly as I let my mouth fall open. He was… "What did you say?"

"I said, 'come on'," he said.

I shook my head and waved that comment away. "No, no, before that. Something about the snow storm I can't remember. You were in the car that crashed into Amanda's?"

"Yeah." He shrugged in such a nonchalant way that I could feel the frost trickling out of my toes in frustration. How could he act like it was no big deal?

"And you never thought about telling me this before, why?"

"I didn't think it mattered." I was about to object, but he stopped me before I got the chance to yell when he added, "Besides, I thought it would upset Amanda."

Well, he had a point there. If I understood correctly, that crash had killed her mother. I didn't really want to make her think too hard on it, though I had to know more about it all the same. If Brent and Amanda had crashed into each other, then they weren't just two random people who happened to get roped into this. And the fact that it was during an out of control snow storm meant that I'd been involved too. But why couldn't I remember it? What had happened to make me lose control so badly?

I didn't know how to respond to that since he was absolutely right about the possibility of it upsetting Amanda. It would have been strange if she didn't get upset by it. Most kids would get upset at reminders of their mother's death, though there was a chance she didn't understand what had happened yet. But still…

"Anyway," I said, diverting the topic back to the place it had come from. "You didn't make us up, Brent. I wish you would just realize that already."

"Really?" he said as he placed his hands challengingly on his hips. "Then explain that thing that that Pitch guy said about me in a way that makes more sense."

"What thing?" I asked, shaking my head in bewilderment. "You really shouldn't take anything he said to heart. He does have a tendency to mix lies in with the truth in order to make it hurt more."

"Yeah, well…" He sighed and rubbed his arms as he attempted to comfort himself, but from what, I didn't know. "I'm pretty sure he was telling the truth this time. I mean really, what makes more sense than me really being Chaos on some other level?"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Okay, I try very hard not to swear, but that time deserved the reaction, even with Amanda present, though I admit that her hearing it left me with a twinge of guilt. "You're not Chaos, Brent. You're nowhere evil enough to be him."

A tug came at my sleeve, and I looked down to see a pitiful look on little Amanda's face. "Chaos is not evil. Be nice!"

I patted her head and apologized to her for saying what I'd said, since swearing in front of a little girl is a really bad thing for a Guardian to do, then said, "I suppose he's not entirely evil. I just don't know what he's trying to do with us."

"I'll tell you what he's doing," said Brent, and he sauntered up to me and stared me hard in the face. "I obviously conjured up Amanda to try and get some sort of peace for having crashed into her car, and then conjured you up too in order to have someone other than myself to blame, since you were the one responsible for the snow storm. And since I'm so juvenile, I just keep punishing you relentlessly. Pitch was right. I'm Chaos. How else would I understand precisely why I would do the things Chaos was doing?"

I clenched my hands and glared back at Brent for a while, not sure if there was anything safe to say in regards to this. He did have some interesting points, and for a moment he even had me wondering if he had somehow made me up and I was just a delusional figment, but I quickly shook that thought out of my head. I think, therefore I am. I wasn't just a figment of Brent's imagination, no matter how much he tried to argue otherwise. But it was rather difficult to argue against him on this matter.

Still, there was something he hadn't addressed yet. I pointed at him and said, "Alright, genius, answer me this: If you're Chaos, why did you attempt to give us a way out with the potions when you just conjured us up?"

Brent scoffed and threw his arms out as though I was a complete ignoramus, then cleared his throat and began to explain. "It was to give me hope, obviously. If one of you had vanished after taking that potion, I would have been able to keep thinking there was a way out of here. Did it never occur to you that no one even thought of having me take the potion? I said it should be you, and you insisted it should be Amanda. No one suggested me. I obviously am smart enough to create a completely convincing system that would keep me duped into thinking I could get out of here when I'm doomed to stay here for eternity."

I blinked. This guy was good. Nevermind that his theory was ridiculous, but it was clever, I had to admit. He was neglecting a key point again though. I placed my hands on my hips and smirked at him. "Alright then, Mr. Chaos, tell me this: If this was such a flawless system to fool you into having hope, then how did you figure it all out?"

"Because I'm smarter than I thought, apparently!"

I threw my hands up in the air and stalked off once again. There was just no reasoning with this boy today. I understood his need to be logical, but jumping to the conclusion of being Chaos simply because Pitch had pointed out the possibility was not logical in the slightest. It was just being gullible.

"Don't you get it, Jack?" Brent called after me. I tried to keep walking and just ignore him, but that didn't deter him in the slightest. "I'm probably _dead!_"

That made me stop in my tracks, but I didn't turn around to face him. What would I say? That he was clearly not dead because I could argue scientifically that he wasn't? How could I measure that on a scientific scale when we were currently inhabiting a world that wasn't even slightly scientific? How could I explain that he wasn't dead simply because I knew he wasn't?

I continued walking again, still not sure what to say, and suddenly wondering what was taking Chaos so long to get on with his next challenge. I probably shouldn't have jinxed it, because I suddenly felt a tingling sensation all over my body even as the landscape warped and twisted until it settled into an eerily familiar setting. I stopped walking for a moment and just stared, then slapped my face into my palm. "Great."

Amanda came running up next to me, and seeing how I was reacting, was quick to ask, "What's wrong, Jack?"

I sighed and raised my eyes to look at her, trying halfheartedly to smile, though I didn't succeed very well. "What's wrong is that Chaos is trying to humiliate me. Look at this!" I stretched my arms out wide for her to see in detail just what I was wearing, then shook my head so the bell on my stupid-looking hat tinkled in mockery of how I felt at the moment.

She giggled and clapped her hands several times. "You look funny!"

I snorted. "I'm aware." I then turned around to look for Brent. He wasn't too far off, but it seemed he'd forgotten how to walk, because he was just staring at me and refusing to budge. I rolled my eyes and called to him. "You coming? Or do you prefer to just stand around looking stupid?" Perhaps that was a little harsh, but it did the trick as he got self conscious and ran up to meet us.

"Alright, I know I have to be making all of this up now," he said as he took a moment to catch my breath. I crossed my arms and regarded him with a couple very angry eyebrows. He saw those eyebrows and felt the urge to explain himself. Eyebrows are good at getting people to talk sometimes.

"I mean, look at you!" He gestured over my body, drawing attention once again to a part of my past that I wished would have just stayed dead and buried. "Obviously only I would know that I tend to think of Jack Frost more like the old Rankin Bass movie than like… well… how you were before."

My hands went back to my hips and I leaned toward him intimidatingly. "Then why wasn't I dressed this way from the start, huh?"

"M-Maybe I just didn't know I wanted you to be Jack Frost?"

I rolled my eyes and stood back up straight, choosing not to respond to that. I was pretty sure he knew how weak that argument was anyway.

I wanted to get going and get through this challenge as soon as possible so I could get out of these stupid clothes. I would take my colonial clothes any day over these. But there was a slight problem, as I found myself unable to take a step forward due to the blasted shoes on my feet.

"Gah! Why did I insist on wearing these stupid things back then?" I knelt down to remove them since I was plenty used to going barefoot by now, but the things wouldn't come off. Chaos apparently didn't want me lessening this challenge by stripping off anything uncomfortable. Like the entire outfit. Great. I was just going to have to be this version of myself for however long he determined I had to be.

"That's a good question," said Brent. "Why did you insist on wearing those back then?"

I spied an opportunity and jumped back to my feet in the hopes of seizing it before it scurried away. "Because people used to believe in fairies more than they do now," I said. "I had hoped that if I dressed the way they believed elves to dress, that someone might notice me at some point."

Brent just chuckled, but at least I managed to get a slight smile out of him. "Did it work?"

"Psh!" I shook my head. "I got my first believer just a couple years ago. No, it didn't work."

"Pity," he said. "I'd have loved to have had someone actually see you in that getup."

"Well, congratulations, Brent. Now you have." I leaned forward and pinched him on the nose, then ran off before he could retaliate after realizing that Jack Frost had just nipped his nose.

I knew Brent wasn't exactly believing in me as of yet, but I was already seeing the genius of this challenge, despite the utter mortification of it. The setting, which was naturally just outside the little town depicted in the movie, was structured according to my memories, not according to the movie depiction. If I could point out details that he wouldn't have been able to think up, then he might start getting off his tangent of insisting he was Chaos.

I hated these shoes. They needed to die. Especially when I tripped over them and fell face first into the snow. Brent and Amanda came running up after that, laughing at my fate as I sat up grumbling.

Brent raised an eyebrow amid his laughter. "Jack Frost trips on snow?"

I stuck my tongue out at him then met his amusement with a scowl. "Yes, Jack Frost trips on snow. Deal with it." I bet that was something he would never have guessed.

Brent scratched the back of his head as he pondered that one. It must have been a very strange thought to him that the bringer of winter wasn't completely immune to winter's influences. "Huh," he said. "Wouldn't have guessed." See? I was right.

I stood back up and promptly flicked his nose. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Brent."

As he flailed at having me attack his nose once again, Amanda tugged on my sleeve and looked up at me with a pair of adorable little puppy dog eyes. "What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"Jack," she said, "where's your staff? You said you needed it."

I chuckled and then squatted down so I was able to be at eye level with her. This was going to be challenging to explain. "Honestly… well, how do I explain this?" I sighed as I wracked my brain for words. No good ones came to mind. Oh well. I guessed I would have to use pathetic words. "I guess you could say that my clothes are my staff this time."

Her eyes grew wide, and her fingers trailed over my sleeves as she tried to solve the mystery I'd just put before her. "Your staff turned into funny clothes?"

I laughed again, then shook my head in awkwardness and amusement. This was awfully hard to explain, and I'd hoped no one would ever ask me. "Well, no. Or yes. I guess it's kind of both." I coughed, then turned to face Brent. "You know about that cat they talk about in sciencey things that they say is both living and dead because they don't know what it is?"

Brent snorted and looked like he was about to die from how I talked about science, but I could tell that he knew exactly what I was talking about. "That's called Shrodinger's Cat, Jack. At least learn the term before trying to talk science."

"Psh!" I waved my hand dismissively at him. "I don't know anything about science. I'm talking magic. Anyway…" I turned back to face Amanda. "I guess you could say that these clothes enhance my natural magic. My staff is in them in a way, though they're not really my staff. You could say it's kind of both at once, though I know that's hard to understand." Amanda nodded faithfully. I knew her little noggin was having a hard time wrapping its mind around this concept, but at least she was trying. I had no idea whether Brent was following me or not, but I didn't really care. He needed to be confused every so often.

Brent started laughing. "So if you take off your clothes, would you turn human?"

I rolled my eyes at Brent again. He was such a dimwit today. "If it were that easy, I would have done so a long time ago."

That caused Brent to scratch his head again as he tried to solve the puzzle that was me. "Wait, are you saying that you actually want to be human?"

But I had already stood up and started walking away, and I refused to answer him.

_**Anybody have any idea what's going on yet? Don't fret if you don't, since most people have a hard time figuring it out before chapter 12 it seems. (I've checked with a few people. That seems to be the breaking point. Though some people figure it out before then.) If not chapter 12, then you'll probably get it by chapter 13. I'm curious to know your theories though if you have them.**_

_**Also, I was wondering if any of you might be willing to enlighten me as to what made you click on this story and any possible ideas as to how to draw other readers in. This story has gotten the least number of hits thus far out of any of my stories ever, which baffles me since I think this is some of my better writing. Figured I might as well ask my readers if they knew what might be going on with that, since I'm honestly clueless. *chuckles***_

_**Again, as before, if you'd like me to upload the next chapter quickly, just give me some reviews. Not picky on the content of them or on how many of them I get. I just don't want this story to die. I'll make sure to respond to all signed reviews too. That reviewer yesterday who simply wrote, "Review" made me laugh so hard. (Actually, all of your reviews made me laugh. You all had a bit of snark, which really made my day, haha. Thank you.)**_

_**Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I look forward to seeing you again next time! :)**_


	10. Truth Hurts

_**Hey, everyone! Here's the next chapter for you since you were all really awesome again! I really appreciate all the reviews. And Painapple, you were hilarious and awesome. Thank you for your long review, haha.**_

_**Anyway, this chapter's shorter than most of them, which I apologize for, but it has some really key hints in it about what's going on. Maybe some of you will figure it out from this? *chuckles* If you don't figure it out though, don't fret. Everything gets revealed in chapter 14, which is the last chapter. The end of the story's coming up quick, guys!**_

_**Disclaimer: I ain't be ownin' nothing. At least nothing related to ROTG, anyway.**_

It seemed to rub Brent the wrong way when he noticed I was walking in the direction away from the town. Apparently that was the wrong thing for Jack Frost to do when he was suddenly positioned in this setting and in these clothes. He ran up and stopped right in front of me, effectively blocking my path.

"Wait, aren't we supposed to be going and finding that hot chick of yours in town or something? Isn't that why we're here?"

I raised my eyes slowly to meet his, then dropped my gaze to the ground. "I think it best not to seek out Elisa. It wouldn't even be the real girl, just a figment." I then wrapped my arms around myself as though shielding myself from the cold and brushed past Brent. He watched me go with a stunned expression on his face.

After a moment, he recovered and ran up to keep pace with me. "Whoa, hang on," he said. "I thought you had the hots for that chick. Even if she's a figment, wouldn't you want to at least look at her?"

I stopped and glared at Brent. He should really know better than to ask questions like this. "Did you enjoy looking at Gabrielle when Chaos graciously showed her to you?"

Brent gulped, having a wide eyed look cross his features. His hands fidgeted for something to do. "B-But, that was different. I would never have wanted to rewatch how she _died!"_

I snorted. "And how are you so sure I wouldn't be experiencing the same thing?"

"The movie had nothing of the sort in it!"

I crossed my arms again, but stared at the ground, remorseful. "There are a few things I didn't tell the movie makers, Brent."

I then turned and started walking again. Brent called after me with, "What did you not tell them? Jack? Jack! What didn't you tell them?" But I couldn't bring myself to answer. Instead I just started whistling, and the snow began to fall.

* * *

Curious little Brent couldn't seem to leave well enough alone. He allowed me to stew in my own musings for a little while, but all these details I was telling him that he'd never suspected seemed to be so intriguing to him that he hungered for more, despite how much pain they caused either one of us. As soon as he decided it was safe, he approached me again. "So… Jack? If you actually, you know, had this phase," he waved to my clothes to clarify the meaning of his wording, "why aren't you still working with Holly and Snip and all those other guys like in the movie? Why would you ever want to work alone?"

I rounded on Brent, peeved with all his constant poking at my tender soul. Curiosity or not, there comes a point when you should just shy away and avoid crossing the line. "Whoever said I wanted to work alone? Huh?! What would ever make you think I would want that?"

He finally jumped backward and began to cower slightly like he should have long ago. My eyes burned with age old hurts that had never been rectified, and I think he was finally beginning to see that. But even age old hurts can't quence a burning curiosity. "But-But—if you don't want to be alone—why did you leave them?"

I'd had quite enough of this, and I threw my arms into the air in exasperation. "I didn't!" Then I kicked off the ground and flew as fast as I could to a quiet place where I could soothe my wounds in solitude for a while. I hoped Chaos would at least allow me that.

* * *

It was difficult to tell how much time had passed. Granted, I always struggle to keep track of time, since immortality tends to mess with one's internal clock a bit, but it was even harder in Chaos's realm. Still, it felt like I had been alone for several hours, just chilling out on a branch of a favorite old tree, when I heard the crunch of snow at the base of the tree.

"You know, if you're trying to hide, you might want to consider pulling your feet up so no one sees those crazy clothes of yours. That purple kind of stands out."

I rolled my eyes and then pulled my feet up into the branches as Brent had suggested. I didn't really want to talk to him just yet, but I was glad that Chaos had left the both of us alone. And I assumed he had been kind to Amanda too. Chaos seemed to have a soft spot for her.

Brent plopped down with a sigh into the snow at the base of the tree. It seemed he wasn't going to just leave me here to be alone. Pity. Oh well, I wasn't going to run off again unless he pushed my buttons.

After a few minutes of us just sitting there in silence, Brent spoke up. "Jack, I—I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—I mean—I'm sorry I keep flipping back and forth on whether I believe in you or not. I know it's not fair to you, but I just—you gotta understand that I've spent my _entire_ life believing that everything in life can be explained. But all this…" He shook his head sadly. "I swear my mind is crumbling around me, Jack. Can you blame me for being a little scared of accepting that maybe, just maybe, you might actually exist?"

I sighed, then turned over on the branch so I could see him sitting there below me, looking subdued. "No," I said. "I can't blame you. I might have reacted similarly if I had been thrust into a situation like this when I was human. This ordeal is just hard on all of us."

Brent nodded silently, and I turned back over to rest on my back, satisfied that he at least knew I didn't hate him for his lack of belief. I understood. I really did. Sometimes belief is exactly what a person needs to get through hard times, and sometimes it's just the opposite. Brent just happened to be one of those who relied on the powers of his mind to get him through everything he'd experienced up until now, but it looked like he'd finally run into a challenge that his mind couldn't handle. Perhaps he needed to finally find something to believe in.

"What happened?" said Brent after a moment of silence.

"Hmm?" I turned my face to see him out of the corner of my eye.

"Y-You said you didn't leave your winter people, that you wouldn't want to work alone. What happened?"

I closed my eyes, unsure of whether to just give in and answer this question or to just leave it unspoken. Brent would understand if I couldn't bring myself to talk about it, I was sure. But at the same time, it might do me some good to actually share it with somebody. I'd kept everything cooped up inside long enough.

"We were attacked," I said as my eyes started to sting. I blinked hard to keep the stinging from forming into tears. Having to put up with tears frozen onto my face wasn't something I wanted to deal with at the moment. "Or rather, they were. I was away delivering snow at the time, and when I went back to report on my progress—" My voice caught and I choked. Brent remained silent, I assume out of pity. Or perhaps sympathy. He did know what it was like to lose a loved one, after all. I'm not sure if he'd ever lost his entire family though, or what he considered to be his family.

When I started to calm down a little, he pushed another question at me. "How are you able to bring winter everywhere when you were only bringing snow, not making it? I don't underst—"

"I've always had all the power I needed," I interrupted. There was no point in making him struggle to word the concept when I knew exactly what he was trying to say anyway. "A bunch of us winter sprites got together and formed a team to make winter more efficient, so I became the distributor rather than the—the everythinger. I guess someone didn't like our efficient little team and—and—" My voice cracked up again and I hid my face in my hands. I thought I would have been able to handle this by now, but it seemed I'd been wrong. Even after a few hundred years, it was still too soon.

Brent got to his feet and reached up to grasp my arm and give it a reassuring squeeze. "I don't know why I ever thought I'd conjured you up. Regardless of whether you're deluded or telling the truth about your identity, I would never have conjured up a story like that."

I breathed a sigh of relief just as a tingling spread over my whole body again, and my normal clothes returned to me at last. It seemed that Chaos agreed with me that the purpose of that challenge had been met. I wasn't sure that Brent had concluded he wasn't Chaos yet, but he'd at least decided that I wasn't a figment of his imagination. If nothing else, it meant he wouldn't have to suffer alone.

* * *

"_Jack."_

I startled awake at the sound of the voice intruding into my ears, then was surprised to realize I had fallen asleep. And that Chaos had let me. Maybe he realized how emotionally exhausted that last challenge had left me and actually felt sorry for me. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? I wish I knew.

"_Can you hear me?"_

I definitely could hear them, and I strained to get to my feet on my branch in the hopes of getting closer to the source of the voice so I could hear them better. But of course, it didn't help. I didn't even know where the voice was coming from, but it sounded familiar. Really familiar.

"_Jack, I brought a book. I wanted to read you a story, if that's okay."_

I nodded that it was okay, though I was uncertain as to whether the voice could see me or not. Maybe I should have responded audibly. Maybe the voice would have noticed then. But I wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy. Well, no more than usual, at least.

I turned to see Brent and Amanda sitting and chatting with each other on the ground. I pointed to the sky and said, "Hey, do you guys hear the voice?"

Brent raised an eyebrow. "You mean Chaos?"

I shook my head. "No, no, the new voice. The one that's asking me if they can read me a story."

Brent's eyebrow only raised a little higher. "You hearing voices now, Jack?"

I stamped my foot in irritation. I wasn't crazy. I didn't think I was, anyway. I'd honestly heard that voice, and I didn't think it was just something in my head. I had no idea why they couldn't hear the voice themselves, as it really did make me look like I was going insane, but somehow I thought that hearing this voice was the sanest thing I'd done since I'd first come to this strange land.

I looked up at the sky. "Who are you?" I whispered, even though I half knew the answer already. "Could you at least say your name?"

The voice didn't answer my question, although they didn't seem to have a problem with revealing their identity. "_Remember this book, Jack? It's the one Sophie always begs me to read to her at bedtime. I thought you'd enjoy hearing it again."_

"Jamie…" I whispered, awe filling my voice for a reason I could not explain. Jamie should have been someone I completely expected to have pop up at some point since we were so close. So why were tears suddenly running down my face and stinging my cheeks as they froze in place?

Brent noticed my ordeal and turned his attention to the sobbing clown standing above him, not surprisingly unnerved at having a sobbing clown going insane while standing over him. "What's the matter, Jack?"

"I-I'm just… crazy," I said, and I closed my eyes and hopped down to the ground to join them. Whether I was really hearing Jamie's voice or not, I should have been glad to hear it. Relieved even. The fact that I'd reacted to the contrary clearly just meant I was going insane. It was official now.

_**Anybody know what's going on yet? Haha, I'm still curious to hear your theories if you have them. I've never held suspense for this long in a story before, so hearing people's guesses is honestly very helpful, but you're free to say whatever you feel like saying in your reviews. I don't really care. I just like hearing from you, haha.**_

_**Well, guys, you know the drill. If I get reviews, I'll update quickly as I've been doing. If I don't, I'll update in a week. Heck, if I get reviews REALLY fast I'm happy to even update TODAY. Up to you guys. *chuckles* You can tell me how fast you want these chapters. ;)**_

_**Anyway, thanks again for reading. Hope to see you back here again next time!**_


	11. Love You Forever

_**Hey, guys! That's right, I'm actually updating within the same day for once, haha. Hope that makes you guys happy. :)**_

_**Also, Painapple: with regard to the movie mentioned in the last two chapters, you're right, most of the fandom has at least heard of this movie, so it hadn't even occurred to me to say what I'm referencing. But I did make sure to at least be clear with the details so that people who hadn't seen it could still follow the story, as a lot of the fandom hasn't seen the movie but has heard of it. The movie in question is called, quite simply, "Jack Frost" and it's the 1979 version by Rankin Bass. If you look up "Jack Frost 1979" you should be able to find it. I've found it on youtube before.**_

_**And Ronda: I'm sorry, but there has to be an end to this story. Trying to come up with a sequel though. Want to help me brainstorm? I do need a little help for it, haha.**_

_**Anyway, hope you all enjoy this chapter!**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own ROTG. And my disclaimers have been getting lamer and lamer with time. Should I give up? Probably. But I shall nevaaaaaaaah give in!**_

"_A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and __forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang:_

_I'll love you forever,  
__I'll like you for always,  
__As long as I'm living  
__my baby you'll be."_

It seemed Jamie hadn't heard whether I approved of him reading me a story or not, but I was relieved to see that he had gone on with doing so anyway. And at the same time, saddened. I had no idea why this was. Shouldn't I be rejoicing at finally hearing a friendly voice after all this time? If I wanted to cry from hearing Jamie's voice, I should be crying tears of joy, not of sorrow. I was so messed up, it wasn't even funny.

Jamie was right about this being one of Sophie's favorite stories. I had been around to listen to him read it to her sometimes. He had always sung the lullaby aloud, using a tune his mother had made up when he was young, and then he passed it onto his sister. And now he was passing it onto me. That thought alone made me gulp, earning a funny look from Brent, which I tried to ignore. He thought I was crazy enough right then without him knowing that I was still listening to the voice that only I could hear.

I listened in complete silence as Jamie continued with the story as the baby grew through his entire childhood and then even into adulthood with his mother being the crazy stalker she was while always singing this lullaby. Only Robert Munsch could write a story about such a completely endearing psycho lady and have it go over as phenomenally well as this story had. I'd heard this story a million times by now, but this time, when the man returned the favor of singing the lullaby to his mother, I choked up. I don't know why, but I did. Something about that gesture just got to me that time.

And as if that reaction wasn't strong enough, after Jamie finished the book, his attention directed back toward me again, and he picked up the same tune once again.

"_I'll love you forever,  
__I'll like you for always,  
__As long as I'm living,  
__My best friend you'll be."_

If Brent hadn't thought I was crazy yet from the last occurrence of my reacting to Jamie's voice, he definitely thought it now as I completely lost control of my emotions. Tears flooded out and hung off my cheeks in long icicles that I did not want to think about how I was going to remove later, since prying ice off of one's skin is somewhat painful.

Why on Earth would I cry over Jamie being kind to me? Jamie was just a kind person. That was just the way he always was. I was overreacting. I definitely was. But gosh, I'd missed his voice so much. Even as I thought about it, I shivered and started crying again.

Between sobs, I raised my eyes to the heavens where it sounded like Jamie's voice was coming from, and I said, "Don't leave me, Jamie. Please keep talking to me. I can hear you." Naturally, Brent still thought I was crazy, but it was worth it since Jamie obliged and continued talking about whatever occurred to him, whether he heard a response from me or not. Which he never did. I honestly had no idea how he was getting his voice into this world, but it didn't sound like he was trapped. I breathed a sigh of relief that at least someone was okay, despite all this nonsense.

Brent, Amanda, and I decided that we'd sat in one place long enough and should probably get going before Chaos got upset at us. He'd strangely been rather reserved after that last challenge and had given us time to recuperate from it, but I didn't want to count on Chaos's integrity more than I had to. Especially since I had no idea if the guy actually had integrity or if he'd just gotten busy hatching up new evil plots to do to me. It was better safe than sorry.

I don't know why I'd assumed that moving would cause us to experience less pain, considering that Chaos always seemed to dole it out whether we were moving or not. Maybe I just liked the illusion of being in control. Though once I started sneezing, I realized just how out of control I had gotten.

You see, I don't sneeze. Not often, anyway. Being a force of nature comes with its perks, like not reacting to pollen, dust, or mold the way most humans do. If those things made me sneeze, I would have an awful time being the spirit of winter since I have to ride the wind every day to get where I need to go.

So when I started sneezing, not once, not twice, but over and over again, I started to worry. This was not normal behavior for me, and it was bound to result in something unpleasant if it kept up. Brent and Amanda didn't realize how dire the situation was and were just chuckling at how I'd gotten myself caught in a sneezing fit. I think Amanda just liked the little mini flurries I sneezed out every time. I supposed I would have been amused too if the circumstances had been different.

Their tune changed with the appearance of the first crack. It had appeared after a particularly bad sneeze had wracked my body, and I'd felt a piece of my cheek crack apart as thought I were literally made of ice. I reached up to brush the crack and shivered in fright as it felt it graced across my cheek. This was not good. Not good at all. I attempted to hold in my next sneeze.

Naturally, it didn't work. I've never known how to hold in a sneeze. And now that the cracking had started, it began to spread with each new sneeze. Soon I had cracks all over my face and neck. What would happen if I didn't stop sneezing? Would I literally fall apart?

I prepared to sneeze again, helpless against this awful force of nature that I was not immune to this time, when Brent finally came to the rescue. "Say 'pineapple'."

"Pineapple?" I repeated, not sure why I was supposed to do that. I blinked, realizing what had just happened and confused about why it had. My sneeze had gone away. "Okay, what just happened?"

He shrugged. "Eh, saying 'pineapple' at the right time can prevent a sneeze. It's just a weird trick I've picked up since I have awful spring allergies."

"Great," I said, sniffling to help my nose not to run and freeze into awkward icicles. "So the cure to my sneezing fit is a metaphorical dash of pineapple. How random can you get?"

He shrugged again, seeming to enjoy my confusion at the stupid life hack. "Hey, you need to ask Chaos if you want to know just how random you can get."

"No thanks," I said, just before another sneeze snuck up on me before I could remember to say "pineapple". A crack spread onto my collar bone. Great. Even with the brilliant life hack, I was going to have to pay more attention to what I was doing if I didn't want this thing to spread further.

Brent seemed to see my struggle with this and suggested that we stop and rest so I didn't tax my system more than necessary. I tried to object, but a couple more sneezes silenced that issue. I really did need to stop forcing my body to do anything if I wanted to make this fit go away completely rather than just postponing the inevitable with a dash of pineapple.

The sneezes were becoming more insistent, and therefore so were my pineappular utterings. I began to say "pineapple" even when I didn't feel a sneeze coming on yet, just in case. Occasionally a sneeze snuck through anyway, but I was generally holding them off. If nothing else, it at least bought me a little time to converse with Brent and Amanda.

"What's gonna happen if you fall apart, Jack?" said Amanda.

I shook my head and sniffed, then shrugged. "I really don't know. But—" I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. "Chaos hasn't tried to kill any of us yet. Perhaps he's trying to teach me something, I don't know."

"So what should we do if that happens?" said Brent. I was a little unnerved that the great thinker named Brent didn't already have a plan in mind about how to deal with me if falling apart was indeed in Chaos's plan, but I supposed I shouldn't have expected such a thing of him. Who makes a plan on how to react to their friend falling apart?

"Well…" I scratched my head. "I guess you should just try to find the pieces and put them back together. It seems it would work by Chaos's logic."

"A-Alright," he said. "We'll—We'll try." He gulped, and I felt sorry for the poor guy. I wished I could just make things make a little more sense to him for once. It had to be hard to deal with the world being senseless when the only thing you knew before was logic and common sense.

"Pineapple! Pineapple pineapple!" The sneezes had escalated to a point where even shouting the magic word multiple times before the onset of a sneeze didn't seem to do any good now, and the cracks had reached my legs by then. Just a little further and my toes would be cracking apart as well.

Amanda ran over to me and threw her arms around me. "I don't want you to fall apart!"

I returned her gentle little hug with one of my own, smiling as I replied. "It's okay." I stroked her hair, hoping it would calm her down at least a tiny bit. "I'll find a way to come back to you if that happens."

Hardly two minutes had passed since her hug, and I had sneezed several more times, which had brought the cracks all the way to the tips of my toes. I didn't know what one more large sneeze would do, and to be safe I'd let go of Amanda and went a short distance from the group. The last thing I wanted to have happen was for one of them to get impaled by a flying shard of Jack.

I felt a sneeze coming on, and I knew it would be huge, but I repeated my pineapple mantra as much as possible, hoping to stave it off for at least a few more minutes. Anything to delay the inevitable.

"Jack!" Brent jumped to his feet. "J-Just in case this is…" He gulped and looked away shamefully, as though thinking of the possibility that I might be dying from this was a traitorous act. He then looked back up at me. "I-I just… wanted you to know that I—I think I believe you. That you're Jack Frost, I mean."

A giant smile split my face at hearing these words. Stubborn Brent, giving in and believing in something intangible? This was profound. "And Amanda?" I said.

He waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, she never questioned it. As soon as you said that was your name, she just accepted it like it was nothing."

I laughed despite knowing that it was probably a bad idea at the moment. It just felt good to finally be acknowledged for who I was, even if this was possibly the last time I'd be able to hear it. And if there was any chance that this might be the last time I'd be able to laugh, then I definitely wanted to take advantage of this opportunity while I had it.

Suddenly the sneeze sprung up and took me while I wasn't prepared, leaving a resounding echo of "ACHOO!" across the plain. My body responded in kind by shattering into a thousand pieces and sending each piece flying off in a different direction. Thankfully all the pieces avoided Brent and Amanda, but I wasn't so lucky. Every piece of me embedded itself in a different location throughout the land of Chaos, and I was conscious of every single location I was in.

It would have been easier to have died from that experience or to have at least lost consciousness until Brent and Amanda figured out what to do, but no. Chaos had to make sure I was fully aware of everything that happened. Why, I didn't know. I sure hoped he had a reasonable explanation for putting me through such nonsense.

As soon as they'd recovered from the shock of seeing their friend fly apart, Brent and Amanda started scrambling to pick up any piece of me they could see lying around. There were a lot of shards though, and some of them had drifted pretty far from where I had been standing when the colossal sneeze of doom had hit. This was going to take a while.

In the meantime, I decided to do the only thing I could do and observe my surroundings from every single vantage point. Even though most of my body were not eyes or ears, I strangely found myself able to see and hear everything at every location of one of my shards. This was probably Chaos's whole intent. To get me to just stop talking and pay attention for a while. Well, now he had my attention. All of it.

Perhaps he hadn't realized just how brilliant of a plan he'd come up with, because as Jamie's voice continued to permeate the atmosphere with cries of, "_I miss you, Jack. Please come back!" _Chaos reacted in a way I never would have expected. He began to sob pitifully, wrenching my heart open and spilling out all the warm fuzzies everywhere. Whether Chaos was evil or not, I couldn't hate someone who had a soft spot for children.

"Jamie, please stop!" cried Chaos. "You're breaking my heart!"

That was when it hit me. Chaos could hear Jamie! I really wasn't crazy. I had no idea why neither Brent nor Amanda could hear him, but Chaos had definitely confirmed my suspicions on that one. For once, I was pretty sure this wasn't one of his tricks. He hadn't actually expected me to pick up on that.

I didn't know how to communicate when I was just a bunch of shards in various locations, but if I could see and hear everywhere I was, then maybe I could talk through each shard if I focused well enough. I remembered how Pitch had accidentally taught us all a lesson about how this strange land worked and how we could wield some of Chaos's magic if we willed it strongly enough. I projected my focus into one of my shards and yelled out to the sky. "Chaos, you can hear Jamie! Why can you hear him, but Brent and Amanda can't?"

I had been absolutely right in assuming that Chaos hadn't realized I'd been watching, because he yelped at my sudden intrusion and tried to brush off my question with a simple, "What? I didn't—you're just crazy."

"Uh huh," I said, not buying that excuse in the slightest. "I think you just have a soft spot for kids."

"What? No. I don't—no. I don't like anybody, because I'm all evil and stuff."

"Right," I said, still not buying it. Amanda was absolutely right. This guy wasn't really evil, though I had no idea whether he was good either. I had yet to learn his motivation. "Chaos, just tell me what you're trying to do already. We could help it happen faster if we at least knew what you were looking for, and probably with a lot less pain."

"Wha—no—I can't—because—" For some reason, it seemed that my offer to actually cooperate with him had never occurred to him as a possibility, and it had completely thrown him off balance. This was new. I'd never expected to see this side of the guy. Now I was starting to see a vulnerable little person under the tough exterior who just needed some help. I supposed there was a slight chance that he could be Brent, however unlikely that seemed.

"Just tell us why we're here!" I said. "We can't help you unless we know the truth."

A panicked gasp, followed by a hasty, "You'll have to catch me first," caught my ear. I would have been quite disillusioned by this if one of my other shards hadn't happened to pick up a shadow darting suddenly across the landscape. It was like someone was moving fast to try and find someplace to get away and hide.

I needed to get Brent's and Amanda's help on this. I focused my attention into a shard that Brent was holding and said, "Brent, I know it's crazy that I can talk through this, but just keep your cool, okay? It's just another weird thing Chaos is doing." Brent had yelped and jumped back when I'd first spoken, but he recovered quickly enough. We'd seen weirder in this land.

I then continued on in my speech. "I can see everywhere in this landscape right now, and I just saw what I think was Chaos making a break for it on those dunes to the west."

Brent blinked for several as he processed this information, then turned his attention back to my shard and said, "So you can tell us where Chaos is?"

"If I see him, yes."

"And you can tell us where your shards are?"

I would have smacked myself for not thinking of that if I'd been able to physically move. How stupid of me for not even considering that as a possibility. Telling them where I was in all my pieces would speed up the collection process considerably. And make us just that much more likely to catch Chaos.

"Now why didn't I think of that?" I huffed, indignant at my stupid self. "Yes, I can tell you what the landscape looks like around each shard, and I think you can find me that way. And try to track down Chaos too so we can beat the truth out of him. You up for it?"

"Hell yeah!" he said. "I'm as ready as ever to get out of this crazy place."

"Bad Brent!" said Amanda as she shook her finger at the boy. "That's a naughty word.

Brent and I laughed as they continued to pick up the pieces one by one. Things were coming to a head, and I sensed that something was going to burst very soon. The tables were just about to turn on Chaos.

_**Oh, boy, now Chaos is in for it. *chuckles***_

_**Anyway, I know the pain of dealing with cliffhangers during the climax, which we've just entered. I'll happily upload the next chapter the instant a few reviews come in rather than waiting for an ideal time of day, and I'll keep doing that with all the other chapters just so you don't have to bite your nails for too long. ;)**_

_**Hope you enjoyed the chapter, and see you next time!**_


	12. Shards of Memory

_**Well, I only got one review on the last chapter, but I didn't want to be a big meanie and hold this chapter for a week just because I didn't get more. *snickers* Thank you to the one reviewer though. I appreciate that. :) I'd imagine it was just my fault for uploading that last chapter at the wrong time of day so hardly anyone saw it. That happens, and the last chapter hasn't gotten many hits yet. *shrugs* My fault. No one else's. *chuckles***_

_**I also wanted to make sure to get this chapter in before the weekend since people hardly ever seem to log on during the weekends, so here you go. I hope you enjoy it! Sorry for the slight delay, haha.**_

_**Disclaimer: I still don't own ROTG. If you thought I did, then I think you need to look up the definition of fanfiction. *snickers***_

"_Jack? Can you still hear me? I just… I just wanted to let you know that I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry."_

"What do you have to be sorry for, Jamie?" I said from my observing position in one of my shards, but of course I didn't get an answer. I could hear Jamie. Heck, Chaos could hear Jamie. But Jamie couldn't hear me. I had no idea why, and it was breaking my heart. Was Chaos blocking my words from getting out? If he was, he was so going to pay when I got my body put back together and we caught him.

"There's a shard about two yards west of where you're standing," I said to Brent. "It's surrounded by a patch of rubble. It might be hard to see the shard from here."

"I see where you're talking about," said Brent. He and Amanda meandered over to the rubble and began pawing through it for several minutes, Amanda exclaiming in joy when she pulled out the piece of me they were looking for.

"Okay," I said, relieved at having another piece found. "There's another piece of me over at—"

"I think we should try assembling the shards we've got first," said Brent. "We're getting too many to just carry in our arms without putting some of them back together."

"Oh, um… alright." I coughed, not entirely sure how to make my response to this sound intelligent. "But how are you going to make the shards stick to each other?"

"I'll make do with whatever I can find," he said. "Pine sap, honey, a random bottle of Elmer's glue that just happens to be lying on the ground, or whatever else. I'll tear our clothes apart and tie you back together if we have no other way."

I chuckled from the awkward mental image of my being tied together with strips of fabric from their clothes and leaving a half naked Brent and Amanda behind. But I was strangely touched. Brent was absolutely determined to get me back, despite how much work it was taking him to do so. He had really grown in the time since he'd been here, journeying with us.

"There was some sticky stuff in that creek we crossed," supplied Amanda, and I couldn't help but mentally smirk at her helpfulness right then. She had also grown a lot in the time we'd been together. She'd become a wiser girl, and Brent had opened up his heart. What had I done? Had I grown at all? I was the boy who never aged. Did that mean I never grew mentally either?

"Awesome! Thanks, Amanda." Brent hefted my shards that he'd collected back to the creek she had spoken of and then laid them all out along the bank of the creek. He reached into the creek and grabbed a handful of whatever it was that was sticky, but I could tell that he wasn't particularly concerned about what substance the stuff was made out of. He was more concerned with getting his friend back together, even if it meant smearing his hands with a substance that was potentially gross.

After trying out a few different positions with the shards, he finally found a few that interlocked perfectly, and he began to smear the sticky stuff on the edges of the shards to glue them back together. Once he placed them back together and the pieces had adhered properly, a strange thing happened.

I received a vision of a snow storm. A really intense one that I could barely see through. I was floating high overhead, my heart filled with a mountain of guilt and sadness that I couldn't shove away to regain control of the storm around me. Then I saw a car skidding out of control.

And just like that, the vision ended. But I had finally seen a glimpse of something I'd been trying to grasp for a while. "Brent?" I said. "That snow storm… I-I think I remember it."

"Good," he said. "I think." He then reached for another piece and spread the sticky substance on it and pressed another piece into place. It seemed he didn't find it very important that the snow storm was beginning to enter my memory at last. But I knew it was a phenomenal recovery.

And just like that, with the addition of a second shard, my mind flashed again, but this time to a different scene. I was trying to talk to North as he worked on some new creation of his, but he kept going back to his work and acting like I wasn't even there. A sense of foreboding cropped up in me as the memory faded. That hadn't seemed like a good thing.

Brent clicked several more shards into place, but they didn't come with their own separate memories. Maybe my mind was on memory overload and would need to take the time to recharge before I figured anything else out. It was a pity. I really wanted to know what was going on, at least as far as that scenario went. I doubted it would tell me why I was here, but it still seemed important somehow.

After he'd connected as many shards as he could with what he and Amanda had collected thus far, Brent asked me to direct him to some more of my shards, and he took along as much of that sticky bottom-of-the-creek stuff as he could, just in case. He and Amanda succeeded in collecting several more shards before I suddenly cried out in alarm.

"Chaos!" I said. "Right behind you. I saw a shadow dart that way and run up onto that cliff!"

He turned and looked where I'd directed, and after spending a moment being dismayed over the size of the cliff, grabbed Amanda's hand and said, "Come on, Amanda," and took off running toward the cliff. I didn't know whether we'd catch him this time, but I could only hope we'd at least get close.

It took Brent and Amanda quite some time to scale the cliff, but they managed it well enough in their own time. Sadly, that meant that Chaos was nowhere to be seen, but I kept my eyes peeled as the other two continued to collect pieces of me and stick them back together.

A piece clicked into place, and suddenly another memory was triggered. "Jack, I'm too busy to play. Leave me alone!" I stood watching Tooth direct her fairies to what seemed like all corners of the galaxy, my hand held out hopefully for some kind of recognition, but my face scrunching up in pain at the spiteful words she'd uttered. Then the memory faded. Why was I remembering such short snippets of memory? And why were they all so negative? What had happened recently that had made it so hard to deal with life?

Most of my face was assembled now, and parts of the rest of my body were starting to find their shape. There were still many more shards to collect, but Brent and Amanda were doing a phenomenal job. I still couldn't move, and I suspected I wouldn't be able to until every shard was connected, but it was a relief to at least feel myself coming back together, even though I felt for Brent having to lug my heavy body around everywhere.

"Why won't Chaos just put you back together already?" said Brent, rolling his eyes and huffing hard enough to blow his bangs out of his face. "He's supposedly not evil, right? And he's certainly capable of putting you back where you belong, so why isn't he doing it?"

I hesitated before I answered, because even I wasn't sure if I was right in my thinking. But I thought it was worth saying it even so, just in case it was something worth saying. "I-I'm getting my memories back, Brent. Sometimes when you put a shard in place, I remember something I've forgotten."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "Like the snow storm?"

"Yeah," I said quietly, then sighed. "Like that."

"Do you remember what caused it to get out of hand like that?"

"Ugh." I felt a lump form in my stomach, which was pretty phenomenal, because it meant I had a stomach again to feel a lump in. "Not entirely, but I think I'm starting to get a picture."

"Well, we'll keep collecting your shards and putting you back together, you keep working on those memories, and we'll all plot on how to beat the crap out of Chaos when we run into him, okay?"

I wasn't sure I wanted to agree to such brutal treatment of anybody, even if the person supposedly deserved it. I was normally even hesitant to beat up on Pitch, and I definitely knew he deserved it. Sometimes that was the only way to keep him from harming a child. But I didn't think the same applied to Chaos, considering how he'd been reacting to Amanda and Jamie.

I squeaked out a meek, "O-Okay," not sure if I was doing the right thing in agreeing with Brent's plan of revenge or not.

I directed them to a few more shards, and Brent slipped a couple more into place. Another memory washed over me. A continuation of the one I'd had with North. It seemed I'd gotten fed up with getting ignored by North and had grabbed one of his ice creations to play with, but got startled by an elf screaming about having his cookie stolen by another elf and promptly dropped the ice creation.

North then slammed his tools on the table and pointed at the door. "Get out!" I was too stunned to move, barely registering what had just transpired. So he marched over to me, picked me up by the shoulders, and shouted. "You ruin what you touch, you get out. Now get out! Out of my workshop!" He threw me out the door of his office and slammed the door behind. Then the memory faded, and I whimpered.

Amanda heard the pitiful sound coming from one of my shards, and so she picked up the shard and pet it as though that would help me feel better. "You okay, Jack?"

I sighed. "I just had a bad memory, Amanda. But I'm okay."

"Jack," said Brent, "I hate to break it to you, but you're still scattered all over the place. Let's save the false 'I'm okays' for when you're actually in one piece, hmm?" I gulped and just stared at him. I wasn't sure what to say, or even if I should. If I'd been able to move, my foot would probably have already been in my mouth.

Several minutes later, and I was calling for Brent's and Amanda's attention again. "I saw the shadow again! Chaos was running eastward. Come on, guys, we can catch him!"

Brent just sighed and rolled his eyes. "How about we get you put back together and then hunt down Chaos, okay? You're the only one fast enough to actually get to him before he disappears again."

"But—But—I—" My voice trailed off. He did have a point there, and I had no good counterargument. How were they to catch a being who could travel so fast if they didn't have magic at their disposal? Though I also wondered how we were supposed to catch him even if I was intact if I couldn't keep an eye on every point of the terrain. Chaos was not making this easy, though I don't know why I expected him to. He'd never made anything easy.

Brent attached another piece and I slid into another flashback. "Hey, Bunny, whatcha doin'?" I said.

"Leave me alone, Frostbite. I'm busy."

"But I could help," I said, and I hopped up onto a rock and grabbed a nearby egg and started scribbling on it. I didn't know what I was doing, and I soon realized that my scribblings were starting to strongly resemble snowflakes. It figured. But I was strangely proud of myself and showed my work to Bunny.

He grabbed the egg out of my hand and pointed to the entrance to his warren. "Jack, you're distracting me. Just get out of here before I go bloody mad, will ya?"

I cringed and stepped backward, not understanding his tone. "But I-I just wanted to—"

"OUT!" And he shoved me toward the exit, which I reluctantly went through. Then the memory faded. It was surprising how long this one was, but it was no more pleasant than the others. It seemed they were having a trend of me getting rejected by people I cared about. Why on Earth that was happening, I couldn't fathom. Not yet. I suspected I would understand eventually if this kept up.

Most of my body had been put back together by now, but those last stragglers of shards were in rather elusive places. It really was lucky that I could communicate with Brent and Amanda or it would have been hard to get myself whole again. Thinking about it, I realized that if we had some of Chaos's powers at our disposal, then there was the potential for me to just will myself whole again right then and there. But no matter what I tried, I just couldn't make it happen. Maybe my will wasn't as strong as Chaos's, and he wanted me to be shattered into pieces at the moment so I wouldn't come chasing after him. Or so I would regain my memories.

Another shard clicked into place with that signature click that meant I was going to get a memory, and I soon felt one wash over me, and I was in the presence of the Sandman. I was bouncing all around, telling him about one of my latest adventures and how excited I was about it, when he just pressed his finger to his mouth and went, "Shh!"

I covered my mouth with my hand, shocked that I hadn't remembered that his work was closely tied with sleep and therefore required silence. But I just couldn't stay silent for long. I had too much energy. I jumped up into the wind and began twirling around at the wind's will, laughing when the wind would spontaneously drop me for a while and then catch me at an unexpected place and whip me around to do it again.

Sandy turned and gave me what I can only describe as a dirty look, followed by another, "Shh!"

I quickly apologized and resumed sitting next to him quietly, but wandering minds need to be given something to do before they find something on their own, and my mind soon found an old childhood favorite song that I'd heard some kids singing recently, a lyric that made use of the tune from "Clementine".

"I found a peanut, found a peanut, found a peanut last night. Last night, I found a peanut, found a peanut last night.

"Cracked it open, cracked it open, cracked it open last night…"

Before I could finish the second verse, Sandy's hand whipped out and slapped me across the face, then pointed very decisively in the direction of away. I held my slapped face in shock, then shamefully made my way out of his presence, wishing I could just behave like the adult the rest of them were sometimes.

I gasped as the memory faded. I hadn't ever thought that I would recall the Sandman doing anything even slightly mean to one of his comrades. Being slapped was not something I would have expected, and even now I thought I could feel the sting of his hand across my cheek. What had I done to make him so mad? I knew he wanted me to be quiet and I'd failed in that endeavor, but had I really deserved _that?_

Brent now held the last few shards in his hands, and with a careful breath to improve his concentration, he began placing each one delicately in the places they belonged. I mentally winced every time a piece clicked into place, nervous that I was going to get flashed with another awful memory so soon after the last one. But nothing triggered anything thus far, despite my nervousness. I was tempted to tell Brent to wait on the last ones until I'd had a little distance from that memory, but he probably wouldn't have listened anyway.

One by one, the pieces clicked into place, until there was finally only one piece left. This was it. I would hopefully be able to move as soon as that piece was in place. Brent took a deep breath, put some sticky stuff on the shard, and then slid it into place. I gasped as my entire body suddenly convulsed into motion, the cracks disappearing as my body frantically scrambled for the air it so desperately craved, and I slipped into another memory.

Jamie was working diligently on some sort of model rocket, the kind that is so intricate that you have to use tweezers to put some of the pieces in place. I was perched on the edge of his bed, just watching and trying to involve Jamie in some sort of conversation. The Guardians had been treating me like crap the past week, and I longed for some friendly conversation from someone.

Jamie was so engrossed in his project that I started realizing that he wasn't hearing a word I was saying. I rolled my eyes and huffed a breath of air out the side of my mouth. I supposed I couldn't blame him, considering how into his projects he tended to get. But that didn't negate how badly I needed to talk to someone.

I hopped into the air and gently landed next to his project. He seemed annoyed by my proximity, but I pretended I hadn't seen that expression and knelt down next to him and his rocket anyway. "So what's this?" I grabbed a piece of the rocket and held it up so I could see it.

He grabbed the piece back out of my hand. "Don't touch that, Jack."

I picked up another piece. "What's this then?"

He grabbed that piece out of my hand as well. "I said don't touch."

I was a little miffed at his reaction, but was trying not to let it bother me. Sometimes it just seemed like the world as a whole tended to have bad days. Or weeks. Jamie wasn't likely to be immune, so I shouldn't get too mad at him for it. I leaned over the plans and tried and failed to read the steps. "So what are you doing now?"

He pushed my head back. "You're in the way, Jack."

I blinked to keep tears from coming, as I was pretty sure that Jamie didn't mean to be rude. I was just extra touchy from not having had very good relations with the other Guardians for the past week. That was all it was. I reached out and grabbed the nearest object in the hopes of calming myself down, which just happened to be the rocket itself.

"Jack! Put that down!"

My instincts compelled me to obey Jamie to the letter, and I dropped the offending object in a hurry. Unfortunately, dropping a fragile model rocket usually results in breakage, which was exactly what happened.

Jamie jumped to his feet, absolutely livid. "Why do you ruin everything you touch, Jack? Just get out of here and leave me alone!"

As I left the house with my head bowed like a hurt puppy, I thought that this was where the memory should have faded. But this time, instead of fading, it jumped. It was the next day, and I'd decided to try and make amends with Jamie. I'd recently pilfered some nice winter wear from North's workshop, and thought that a little gift would be a good invitation to go and romp in the snow.

I hopped in through his window and saw him studying really hard at his desk. "Hey, Jamie!" I waved to him. "I got you something. Wanna go sledding today?" I shrugged and walked up to him to see what had him so fascinated.

I never found out what the subject of study was, because he then scooted his chair out from the desk, jumped up from his seat and proceeded to run out of the room, but first running right through me. I gasped in shock and then stood catching my breath for several minutes. He hadn't seen me. He'd stopped believing. _Jamie had stopped believing. _

The memory faded, and my eyes flew open as I heard someone screaming, only to realize after a minute that it was my voice I was hearing. Jamie. I'd lost Jamie. The Guardians had all rejected me, and I'd lost Jamie too.

"Jack?" said Brent, peering down at me in my sniveling heap. "You okay?"

I pressed my hands over my eyes as I started bawling. No, I was not okay. I fully understood what had provoked me into losing control of the snow storm on that day now, and I almost wished I had never found out. I preferred to live in blissful ignorance that everyone I loved still loved me back. Now I wasn't even sure if I wanted to get out of this crazy land of Chaos or not.

Jamie. A nagging thought pricked at the back of my mind, but I couldn't process it at the moment, since I just hurt too much. Jamie. I'd lost Jamie.

_**Well, here's chapter twelve. Do any of you know what's going on yet? Some people can tell by this chapter, though not everyone can. I'm curious what your thoughts are.**_

_**Hmmm... hardly anyone seems to log on over Saturday and Sunday. Should I update during the weekend or not? Will you guys log on and read it then, or should I wait until Monday? The next two chapters are the heart of the climax and the ending of the story altogether. I don't really want them to be under appreciated by a bleh weekend. *chuckles* Feel free to let me know your thoughts on that.**_

_**Anyway, reviews would be really, really, really appreciated. I already really appreciate all the reviews I've gotten thus far, as well as all the faithful readers who have followed with me through this story. Sorry for being as needy on this story as I have been, but I'm unused to a story getting so few hits and I have no idea what's causing that. *chuckles* Makes me think people don't like this story, but I'm so glad I have a few faithful readers. *hugs* Thank you, guys! You have no idea how much I appreciate you!**_

_**In any case, I'll see you at the next chapter. Take care!**_


	13. The Final Challenge

_**You guys are just so nice, do you know that? *hugs* I have a habit of staying up all night lately and sleeping during the day, but I couldn't sleep today and am sitting here extremely groggy, but it means I was able to actually read your reviews at a decent hour this time. *chuckles* So I decided to give you this next chapter today as well.**_

_**I'm sure everyone has a different personal favorite chapter, but this one happens to be mine. I loved how quirky it was to write this one, so I hope you enjoy it.**_

_**Also, the next chapter is the last one. I'm willing to post that one later tonight if I get a few reviews from this one before then. I've been waiting to hear your guys' reaction to this chapter for ages, so let me hear you scream! *laughs***_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own ROTG. The creative disclaimer maker broke. Sorry. *snickers***_

How Brent and Amanda ever got me out of that pitiful, crumpled up position and up onto my feet is beyond me. They both had the patience of saints, at least by this point in our journey. I knew they hadn't started out that way, but like I'd said, they'd both done a lot of growing in their time here. I, on the other hand, seemed to have regressed in my maturity level rather than growing up.

"I don't want to go home!" I shook my head and sobbed as Brent painstakingly dragged me forward, taking caution to ensure I was putting one foot in front of the other. With my current emotional crisis combined with the fact that I'd only recently gotten back control of my body, it was understandable to assume that I might not have full control of my body yet. I suspected he might be right about that, but I didn't want to admit to being weak all of a sudden, not when those two were now so strong, no thanks to me.

"Why the hell not?" Brent huffed and stepped in front of me, hands on his hips as I leaned on my staff for support. "You were the one who has been dragging us forward this whole time, even when we were about ready to give up, even when I thought I was dead, even when I decided I might be Chaos, you still dragged me forward mercilessly. And now that we are so close to facing down the enemy and getting some answers, you want to back out?"

I swallowed and abashedly looked toward the ground. I knew it seemed pretty ridiculous for me to suddenly wish to be left behind in this crazy world after all we'd been through, but Brent hadn't experienced the memories I just had. He wouldn't understand.

"I-I…" I started trying to speak, then I coughed. He softened and pat my back, a gesture that was joined by Amanda patting me wherever she could reach. "I just… there's no one waiting for me back in my world, okay? No one cares."

Brent then crossed his arms and stared at me skeptically, which I supposed was fitting for the one who had originally been labeled as the skeptic among us. "Uh huh," he said. "Obviously that's why your friend Sandy came a-looking for you when you called him."

I winced at the mention of Sandy and hid my face behind my hand in an attempt to conceal the pain. I don't think that it worked though, because Brent was quick to speak up again.

"And what about that voice you and Chaos keep hearing? He seems to be pretty worried about you if he keeps talking and looking for you when he never hears anything back."

That stopped me in my tracks, and I slowly raised my eyes to meet Brent's. Jamie had stopped believing in my memory, but the voice I had heard that Chaos confirmed was Jamie's had happened much more recently than what had transpired in that memory. Did Jamie believe again? Would he be able to see or hear me if I were not in this strange place?

I crumpled to my knees, too emotionally drained to support my own weight while thinking about that fight with Jamie, and allowed my emotions to take control. My shoulders jerked up and down as I started sobbing again, and a chilly wind sprung up from somewhere and wrapped its way around me, bringing a flurry of snow with it. Brent stepped back and hugged himself, no doubt to protect himself from the physical effect of my emotions.

I hid my face in my hands once again and shouted, "JAMIE!" I don't even know what provoked me to shout his name. I don't normally do that, but I just got a little carried away right then and went with it, hoping the gesture would provide at least a semblance of relief.

A gasp from somewhere up above made my lift up my face and look to the sky, even as Jamie's voice came resounding down to my ears once again. "_Tooth! Did you hear that? Did you? He said my name! I swear he said it!"_

A female voice then responded in kind with, "_It did sound kind of like that, didn't it?"_

So Tooth was up there with Jamie, wherever up there was? I hoped she was keeping him safe, since I definitely was not able to do so right then. Though I wasn't entirely sure he would have wanted my interference even if I could have been there. He had been pretty annoyed at me last time.

Tooth's voice came floating back over the ether, and I found myself lowering my hands to my lap as I just stared, fixated, at the sky and wondering what else they would say. "_It seems he can hear you, Jamie. You should keep talking to him."_

Jamie sighed. "_But what if he hates me now? I treated him so horribly the last time I saw him, and now he's… he's… he's…"_

He didn't ever finish his thought, which left me to wonder what he'd actually been trying to say that he couldn't bring himself to. Now I was what? Dead? Lost? I was what? What was Jamie beating himself up over?

Tooth's soothing voice came floating to my ears once again. "_Jamie, I don't think Jack even knows how to hate. You've seen him fight with Pitch, haven't you? Of all the people he could hate, you would think Pitch would be at the top of the list, but he doesn't even hate Pitch. He seems to pity him."_

Another sigh came from Jamie's direction. "_Yeah, but I really don't want to be in the same boat as Pitch."_

"_You could never be in the same place as Pitch in Jack's mind, dear. You're his first believer and best friend. He wouldn't be Jack if he let something like this come between you. Even now, he called for you despite how difficult that must have been. That has to count for something, right?"_

"_I-I guess you're right." _Was it my imagination, or was Jamie crying? "_I just hope he comes back soon. I miss him so much, Tooth."_

"_We all do, Jamie," _said Tooth, "_we all do."_

My eyes slowly rounded into a wide-eyed expression as that last line gradually sunk in. They all missed me? As in, Jamie and all the Guardians? They all missed me? They actually wanted me back? They didn't hate me? Before I realized it, a few tears slipped down onto my cheeks and froze there. They didn't hate me. I didn't know why, but they didn't hate me.

Amanda decided this was the appropriate time to plop herself into my lap and snuggle up as close as she could. "Don't cry, Jack. I give you cuddles." I couldn't help but break into a smile at the cuteness of this, and I threw my arms around her and let my remaining sobs out, soaking the poor little girl with frozen tears. She busied herself with plucking tearsicles off of my face and eyelashes since it apparently wasn't acceptable to keep those on one's face.

After I'd calmed down, I finally looked up at Brent, nodded to him, and said, "Y-You're right, Brent. Let's get out of here so I can see Jamie again."

He breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief, apparently having been worried that I was actually going to stubbornly refuse to budge from this crazy place, then crossed his arms again. "Well, that's just fine and dandy, but just how do we find this crazy Chaos person? You don't exactly have eyes everywhere anymore."

I shook my head. "Nope. But I remember the layout of the land, which I think has to count for something."

He raised an eyebrow at this and paused a moment before speaking his mind. "But isn't the layout constantly changing? What good does it do to memorize it?"

"Heh," I chuckled a moment as I tried to think of a way to explain this to him in words he would understand. "It's not just the way this place looks that I memorized, Brent. It's the way it feels, which doesn't change. There's a place within this land that has a certain feeling to it that Chaos likes to hide in. That's where we need to go, regardless of how the place looks at the time."

That seemed to have made sense enough to Brent that after a moment of pondering the concept, he looked down at me and said, "Think you can walk? Or perhaps fly?"

"I think so." I used my staff and pushed myself to my feet, then breathed a moment before raising my face to the sky and mentally asking the wind to pick me up. Naturally, the wind obliged, though I didn't have as much energy to control myself in the air as I normally did. I supposed it made sense after all I'd been through, but it was still frustrating to have this much of an energy drain on my hands. Emotions could really take it out of you.

I did my best to gently land on my feet, but stumbled a couple steps despite my best efforts. "I can manage," I said, "but I should probably save my energy until I need it. I'll just walk for now." Brent nodded that he understood, and he gestured for me to lead the way, so we set out walking in the direction I indicated.

Ready or not, Chaos, here we come.

* * *

Even with my experience of having my shards spread all over the land, I'm still not entirely sure how big the land of Chaos is. Sometimes it seemed to be a huge mass of land, and sometimes, like the present moment, it seemed rather small. Even without my flying ability, we arrived in a relatively short amount of time at the general spot that Chaos seemed to like to hide. Now the trick was just to find him.

We split up and began tearing the landscape apart, looking in every nook and cranny, and even picking up small rocks to look under each of them. I'd only ever seen a shadow of the guy, but I suspected he could change his size at will. He could be hiding anywhere in this place. And we weren't getting any clues.

Thankfully, we had our brilliant little Amanda, formerly known as "the naive one", to remind us how to think about such abstract situations. "Aren't we supposed to think the way Chaos does?"

I smacked my forehead, baffled at how I'd managed to forget such a basic concept. "Of course we are! Why didn't I think of that?" I laughed to myself, then rubbed my chin as I looked around the terrain for ideas. "Now, if I were a Chaos, where would I hide?"

"Somewhere you would never think to look for him," said Brent, I assumed in an attempt to be helpful, though that thought was pretty obvious.

"Yeah," I said, "Where would we never think to look for him?"

"Now, that's the challenge, isn't it?" said Brent, assuming the traditional thinking posture of an arm across his chest and a hand under his chin. "Because you see, in order to figure out where we would never think to look for him, we have to first think of where we would never think to look, which annihilates the whole thing."

"Thanks, Brent." I then rolled my eyes and turned to Amanda, who seemed to be a little better at practical advice all of a sudden rather than the flamboyantly philosophical Brent. "Snowflake, if you were Chaos, where would you hide if you didn't want us finding you?"

At this, she chuckled, and then said, "One time, my daddy came to visit us, and Mommy got mad at him, so she hid his wallet in his back pocket."

I snorted. This sounded like adorable family banter, even though Amanda was hinting at a slightly dysfunctional relationship here. It was still cute. "And what happened?"

"Daddy couldn't find it. I told him where it was so he wouldn't get mad at Mommy."

I chuckled and rubbed the little girl's hair. She was always the little sweetheart, even trying to stop a potential feud between her parents despite the humor of the situation.

"Yep," said Brent. "I suppose that would work if we had a wallet."

I turned to look at Brent, a smirk making its way onto my face. "What, the great Brent can't see the principle of the story? She's saying that the best way to hide something is to hide it so close that you wouldn't think to look there, which is honestly pretty brilliant. If Chaos has any sense, he's probably doing exactly that."

Brent's shoulders deflated, and I almost pitied the guy for being outstripped in intellectual thought by a six-year-old. But hey, these things happen. Brent had prioritized his logic over all else and trained himself into thinking that way, but Amanda's brilliance was completely natural. It just needed to be encouraged to shine.

Now, how close should we have been looking in order to find Chaos? When something was too close to see, it really required some distance to finally see it, and distance wasn't something we were succeeding at finding at the moment as we combed through our clothes, brushed through our hair, and jumped on our shadows, all to no avail. There had to be something we were missing.

Then Brent snapped his fingers. He had an idea. "Amanda, why don't you tell Chaos exactly what you think about how he's acting right now? I'm sure he'll hear it." I stared at him in awe. That was pretty darn brilliant. Chaos wouldn't be able to resist responding to that.

Amanda crossed her little arms and looked mildly disgruntled as she prepared her speech. "You're being really mean, Chaos. Why won't you let us go home? I wanna see my mommy again."

Tears instantly sprung to my eyes at this, and something about the emotional reaction made me fall back into myself and lose control to something else. My body still behaved normally, but I wasn't piloting it all of a sudden.

"But I-I-I _can't _just let you go, Amanda, I'm sor—"

A collective gasp from all of us made me clap my hands over my mouth in shock, though I'm not sure whether I was the one responsible for that movement or if Chaos was. How had he managed to sneak into my body without my knowing? That guy was quite sinister, if he was willing to stoop to the level of possessing people.

Just as soon as I'd noticed the foreign presence in my body, it departed just as suddenly, throwing me to the ground from the momentum of his hasty departure.

"Oof!" I shook my head and looked back up, only to see a shadow speeding across the landscape. It seemed no one had gotten a good look at what the guy actually looked like. Pity. But there was no time to waste. I sprung to my feet. "Come on!" I launched into the air, grabbing a hand from both Brent and Amanda and racing as fast as I could after the speeding shadow.

Chaos was indeed quite fast, but so was I, and he soon realized that he did not have the advantage in this regard once I had my eyes trained on him. He zigged this way and zagged the next, but I always kept pace with wherever he'd try to turn to throw me off, and I was slowly gaining on him. It seemed I was just getting a feel for how he moved in this strange place.

That was when he tried something particularly devious, and the landscape warped around us once again, causing me to come to a shuttering stop as I took in the new environment with wide eyes. He didn't seriously… yes, he did. He totally did.

A labyrinth had risen up around us, entirely different from what he had called a labyrinth when we'd all first arrived in this place. This looked more like something one would have expected to come out of one of the paintings of Escher, what with the three dimensional effect and various stairways and paths poking out in every which way, even upside down.

I narrowed my eyes and stared challengingly at the labyrinth before us. Chaos was still in there, hiding somewhere in the midst of all of this. I could feel that. He expected us to find our way through this insanity if we wanted to get to him, but was he forgetting I could fly? Perhaps he was.

I let go of Brent and Amanda while I tested my theory, and I levitated off of the platform we'd been standing on and catapulted myself into the labyrinth. No sooner than when I'd entered the labyrinth, I reached another platform standing at a ninety degree angle to me, when suddenly I felt a firm pull that brought me crashing down onto this new platform. I was dazed for a moment as I collected myself, then pushed myself to my feet and took a look around.

My eyes widened again, perhaps even moreso than last time. I knew logically that I was standing sideways, but I was not falling off of this platform. From here, the maze looked even more confusing than it had when I'd first stumbled upon it. Maybe I should just get back to where Brent and Amanda were and let the great and mighty Brent help us find our way through this crazy place.

I launched myself into the air again and tried to aim for the platform I'd originally come from, but ended up passing too close to a landing that hung over my head, and was spontaneously sucked onto that place instead, bumping my head as I touched down. Or was it up? I was so confused.

I rubbed my head a moment as I cursed Chaos under my breath, then stood to my feet and took another look around. I whistled, realizing just how hard this was going to be. My magic wasn't going to be of much use in this place, and it seemed Chaos had been fully prepared for that. Every platform had its own gravitational pull, even the upside down on I was currently standing on. Flying too close to a platform going in a different direction from the one I'd flown off of threw my magic out of balance and caused me to crash. There was no way for me to fly through this place safely, and it didn't even look like I'd be able to fly back to Brent and Amanda very easily.

I cupped my hands to my mouth and called out to them. "Brent! Amanda! I'm over here, but I can't fly very well. I need you to help logic me out of this pickle I've gotten myself in."

The two of them came running into the labyrinth pretty quickly after hearing that, but Amanda collapsed to the ground in hysterics upon seeing me standing upside down on a platform a short distance away. I supposed that would look pretty funny. Brent rolled his eyes at me and smirked. "Magic not working for ya?"

"Not very well, no," I said, and I shrugged sheepishly. I hated depending on logic. It wasn't something I was accustomed to since all I was really good at was playing, but I was starting to see that there was a time to play, and there was a time to think things through like an adult. It was amazing what a six-year-old could teach you about life.

The amusement on Brent's face was hard to miss. I think he loved having me actually being dependent on him. It figured. He held out his hand like a police officer trying to stop a car and said, "Just stay right there. We'll come and get you." He didn't have to tell me twice. I didn't want to get any more lost than I already was. Not without Brent's help. Then I could just blame Brent if we got more lost.

I wasn't entirely sure how much time passed as I waited for them to arrive in the same place as me, but if I had to guess, I would say it took them about fifteen minutes, give or take. It had been rather confusing for the two of them to get used to the layout, not to mention how funny Amanda thought everything was once she changed direction for the first time. That had delayed them for several minutes while she got control of herself again. But at last they'd arrived next to me on the upside down platform, and we could finally get a move on again. As a team.

"Alright, genius," I said, turning to Brent. "Where to next?"

He shrugged, looking somewhat helpless for the first time in a feat of logic, which was somewhat baffling. "That would depend on where Chaos is hiding, and I have no idea where that would be."

That was all the reason for Brent's insecurity? I smacked my forehead in relief, smiled, and then said, "He's in the middle of the labyrinth. I can feel it."

He sighed, looking at me with the hope very dim in his eyes. "But he's just going to run again as soon as we get close. Isn't that what he always does? Doesn't he just want to run us around and around in circles until we drop?"

Somehow, I didn't think that was entirely what Chaos was up to, but as I didn't know for sure, I didn't say. Instead, I knelt down to meet Amanda's questioning gaze and said, "Sweetheart, you seem to be the strongest influence on Chaos right now. Do you think you could ask him to stay where he is so we can talk to him?"

A determined look came over her little face, and she nodded before turning her face toward the labyrinth itself. "Hey, Chaos? Can you wait until we're there so we can talk to you? I know you're not as mean as you say, so can you please, please, please wait for us? Pretty please?" A knot formed in my stomach at hearing Amanda talk like this, and I was pretty sure I heard Chaos gulp from somewhere in the labyrinth. He wasn't going anywhere any time soon, and I gave Brent a knowing look as he resigned himself to help us solve our way through the rest of the puzzle.

It should have been a simple matter of just following Brent through the labyrinth as he figured his way through it piece by piece, but since when are Chaos's puzzles just that easy? Especially since I was pretty sure this was the final test before we would get some answers.

The further we went into the labyrinth, the more a sense of urgency rose within us, and the faster we tried to move. What we were running from, or perhaps running to, none of us knew, but we knew we had to find Chaos as quickly as possible. Before we ran out of time.

What did that even mean? Chaos had said it to Amanda a while ago, but I hadn't understood it then. I didn't understand it now, but I definitely felt our time ticking down to… down to what? I didn't know what I was trying to prove, but somewhere out there in the great big universe was a clock, and I was racing against it.

As if all of this wasn't enough, I suddenly began detecting a garbled argumentative tone in the voices I kept hearing overhead and usually associating with Jamie. I didn't know who any of the other voices were, but I definitely heard the urgency in Jamie's voice as he said, "_No, just give him a little more time. He just needs a little more time!"_

Time for what? Well, whatever it was, Jamie was right. I only needed a little more time. I was sure I could get out of here and back to my own world if Jamie just managed to buy me a little bit of time to do so. I took a deep breath and bit my lip. I really hoped he could do that. It hadn't occurred to me that I might have a time limit on when I could successfully leave this world, but Jamie's words had me wondering. I really hoped we could all get out of this place before the exit was closed to us forever.

Despite how useless my magic was to all of us in this labyrinth, I started using it anyway. It didn't give me a free ride through the maze, but it did allow us to speed up our steps if we were prepared for the inevitable crash every time I kicked off into the air and sped to the next platform. I tried to shield Amanda as best I could whenever I was about to crash while carrying her, but she still got jarred quite a few times, even melting down into tears once. The poor thing. She didn't deserve this.

We were making good progress with the three of us cooperating on getting us through the labyrinth, but something was still missing. Something vital. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was something I was still trying to know that I hadn't quite pieced together just yet. What was it?

The snow storm once again flashed into my head. At least I remembered it now. And all the emotional buildup before I'd lost control of my weather powers explained why I'd lost control of the blizzard in the first place. But I narrowed my eyes as I thought while my feet smacked a rhythm on the floor below as I continued running. We were all connected to that snow storm. But what did that have to do with us being here?

"Get us over there!" Brent pointed to a platform a short distance away, and I shook my head to snap myself out of my thoughts as I nodded and grabbed Amanda, then launched myself into the air and smacked onto the platform across the way. Shaking the sting of the impact out of my head, I then jumped back into the air and returned to where Brent was and promptly fell down onto the platform he was on, though he at least was prepared for this by now and was able to catch me. Then I grabbed him and flew him over to the other platform and wound up with the two of us tumbling into a heap, Amanda giggling at our plight.

No time to sit and stew over our imaginary wounds, so we all jumped up and took off running down the stairs to the next platform, turning around and upside down again and again and again.

The snow storm flashed through my mind again. Why were we all connected to that blasted snow storm? In my mind's eye, I saw Brent's car starting to lose control on the road below as I floated overhead.

"Let's jump to that landing below," said Brent, snapping me out of my musings once again as he pointed to a stair landing directly below us that still managed to be in our path. Jumping to it would save quite a bit of time if we could manage to hit it just right. It meant twisting ourselves in the air so we would land sideways.

"Alright," I said, as I took Amanda in my hands. "Think you can manage the jump on your own?"

He took a deep breath, then let it out uncertainly. "I'll try," he said, then leaped off of the platform, twisting himself in the air so that he managed to land, albeit ungracefully, on the platform he was aiming for. I nodded approvingly, then leaped off our platform with Amanda, twisting through the air with much greater ease than Brent had managed and landed beside him just before tripping and falling over. No time. We all jumped up and continued running again.

Back in my mind again. Brent's car came careening down the road. A sickening feeling in my gut. The two cars were going to crash. It was my fault. All of this was my fault. The Guardians didn't like me. Jamie didn't believe in me. Now people were going to die. It was my fault. All my fault. I had to stop that car.

I snapped out of my thoughts again as Brent pointed to a platform above us that we needed to get to, and I could tell that it would be much easier if I helped them reach that obscure location. I took a deep breath, then launched myself up and caught the edge, letting my feet dangle down close to where Brent and Amanda were.

"Climb aboard!" I said. Brent rolled his eyes, but he picked up Amanda and passed her up to me, and I let go of the platform with one of my hands so I could grasp her around her waist and hoist her up over my head. Then Brent took a flying leap and grasped onto my ankles, then inched his way up me until he was able to climb up onto the platform. He then held his hand out to help me up, and we took off running again.

The car. It was skidding on the ice. Out of control. The other car couldn't see that one. Only I could see through this blizzard, and even I was having trouble. There was no other way out of this. I shot down out of the sky.

"Are we almost there?" I called out as my breath rasped from the intensity of the brisk running and scrambling we were all doing. Even flying wasn't this labor intensive, though I couldn't deny that it was quite invigorating.

"I think so," said Brent. "Might be there in a few minutes if we're lucky."

"Good," I said. "I'm ready to get out of here. Are you ready too, Amanda?"

"Yeah!" she said, throwing her little arms up in the air. I smiled at her. I loved how hopeful she was.

The snow storm blazed around. I shot down out of the sky. I had to stop that car. It was all my fault. I had to fix this. The car approached. I raced to beat it. It was getting closer to the other car. Would I make it in time? I had to.

We rounded a corner, and I finally could see our destination. We were nearly at the middle of the labyrinth. I couldn't see Chaos yet, but I knew he was still there. He wouldn't dare move after Amanda had begged him not to like that. We were nearly there. We were so close to home, I could taste it.

"_Jack, can you hear me?"_ called Jamie all of a sudden. "_Please, you've got to do something, quick. No one believes me that you're still in there."_

Now that was a rather odd thing to say. How could I have been anywhere else but here? I'd been trapped in the same place for a while and hadn't succeeded at getting myself out of here yet. Besides, hadn't Tooth heard me calling Jamie? Hadn't Sandy told them anything? Or were there other people involved in this that Jamie wasn't mentioning?

My mind went back to the snow storm. Brent's car approached. The other car stared blissfully ignorant into the white abyss. I jumped between the two cars and stretched out my hands in the hopes of keeping the two cars from coming into contact with each other. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

We rounded the last corner. The middle of the labyrinth was just a few steps away. We'd made it through. We actually made it!

"_Jack, please wake up."_

My eyebrows shot up. What? I wasn't asleep. What was Jamie talking about?

The snowstorm flashed through my mind again. I screamed for the car to stop. The snow ground beneath my feet. The wind howled past my ears. Snowflakes stung my skin as they pelted into me. My hands stretched to either side of me in the vain hope of stopping the rampaging car. The car came forward. I screamed. It didn't stop. Adrenaline pumped through my veins. The car continued forward. My screams resounded in my ears. The wind echoed my screams. The car came forward. A horrible sound. The sound of a crash. The wind howled. The crash continued. I was in between the two cars. In the midst of the crash. The screams stopped. The crash continued. Everything went black.

As we stepped onto the floor in the middle of the labyrinth, my eyes snapped open and I gasped. Everything had gone black? In my memory? It was so similar to Amanda's in that regard. Did that mean I'd passed out from the trauma? How long had I stayed unconscious before I woke back up?

"Chaos!" I called. "We're here, now where are you?" Sobbing coming from a dark corner was my answer. Oh, he was here alright, and he wasn't going to get away this time. I stalked closer to the corner. "Chaos! We came all this way to get some answers, and now I expect you to give them to us. Who are you?"

Chaos sniffled. "You don't want to know."

I growled and ran my fingers through my hair. We really didn't have time for this. "Just come out and show yourself already!"

A resigned sigh, followed by a, "Very well," and then I heard the pattering of hesitant footsteps approaching.

It seemed to take forever before he finally came out of the shadows, but when he did, it seemed he hadn't taken anywhere near long enough, and he needed to go back where he came from. I raked my fingers through my hair. This was a trick. It had to be. He was messing with my mind again. He was just being some sort of sick, sadistic, twisted…

"_Jack, please. Please wake up."_

There it was, that strange request again. And as I stared at Chaos, things began to click in my mind at an alarming rate to the point where I started shaking and my voice had taken on a life of its own so that I'd started screaming at some point and couldn't stop.

This was ridiculous. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. None of this could be. This wasn't happening. I choked on my sobs.

But as I looked at Chaos, the realization of my reality around me became perfectly clear. I had indeed passed out from that crash in the snow storm, but I hadn't actually woken up. Not yet. I was still out cold.

How did I know that? Because I was standing right across from me, looking back at myself. It was me. I was Chaos.

_***jumps up and down excitedly while trying to restrain self* So what are you guys thinking? Tell me tell me tell me! *chuckles* I'll give you the next chapter quickly if you tell me. ;) *bats eyes***_

_**Anyway, see you guys next time, whenever that happens to be, but I hope it's not too long. I'm too eager to see what you guys think, haha. Take care!**_


	14. Everything Comes Together

_**Well, despite my posting the previous chapter at an awkward time, I still got a couple reviews on it. Thank you, guys! I really appreciate that. I'd love to hear some more reactions too, since this is the first time I've ever written a story like this and want to make sure I'm doing it right so I can do it again in the future, haha. I'd like to rewrite this whole story as an original story so I can publish it, but I don't know how to manage that yet. Still thinking. ;)**_

_**Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this final chapter! Thanks for staying with me through all of this. You're all such wonderful people. *hugs***_

_**Disclaimer: Still don't own ROTG and never will.**_

"No!" I grabbed my head with both hands, closed my eyes, and shook my head as fiercely as I knew how, hoping that if I shook my head enough, the troubling visions before me would suddenly disappear and I could just laugh it all off as my crazy imagination. But alas, when I opened my eyes and looked back at Chaos, I saw the exact same vision I had before. "You can't be—I can't—No! This just—this just can't be!" I screamed again for a moment before finally being able to form words once again, even while screaming. "I'M—NOT—YOU!"

Instead of Chaos responding to this proclamation as I would have expected, Brent was the first one to respond to my outburst. He placed a hand across my shoulders and said, "Whoa, steady there, stranger. You never hated me when you thought I was Chaos."

I flailed and sputtered several times before again finding my words and rounding on Brent. "I never thought you were Chaos! That was you! It was all you! I didn't think _any_ of us were Chaos! I wouldn't have assumed that any of the three of us could be so cruel!"

"Um…" Chaos raised his finger to try and get our attention, but I wasn't able to calm down enough to listen as of yet. I gripped my head again and collapsed to the floor in grief.

"This is ridiculous! This is all ridiculous! I'm not that cruel! I'm not! I wouldn't do all that he did! I would _never_ do that! NEVER! I'm not Chaos!"

"Um…" said Chaos again, but once again he went unnoticed.

"Jack, calm down!" Brent knelt by my pathetic little form as I started quivering with an intense form of fear as the reality of the situation slowly sank into place and I realized just what kind of person this made me out to be. If I was capable of doing what Chaos had done, then what else could I—?

Brent grabbed my shoulders and gave me a firm shake. "Jack, get a grip on yourself! You've started asking Amanda for advice instead of me, right? Well, don't you remember how she was the first one to start insisting that Chaos wasn't evil? Do you remember?" He shook me again for emphasis. "Do you?"

I tried to speak, but my tongue could barely move, let alone form words. I was so scared. What had happened to me? What had happened to all of us? Were Brent and Amanda figments of my imagination to keep me entertained while I was coping with myself? Oh god, I hoped not. I hated to think that I'd lost my sanity that intensely, especially to think that I'd come up with a person like Brent, someone who honestly couldn't stand me from the start, even if he gradually grew to like me. Was that all fake? Was I really alone in here with no one but myself to talk to?

"If you would just listen to me, I could explain!" I heard a huff and then the sound of irritated footsteps approaching. I shivered, realizing that Chaos was getting closer, and I was undecided as to whether I wanted that or not. I wanted answers, or I thought I did, but I was terrified of him… me. I wasn't really sure what I was feeling at the moment. Everything was just too much. How on Earth was Brent taking this so well when I had completely lost it? And how was Amanda taking it? I hadn't heard anything from her and couldn't bear to look.

Chaos came and stood right over me, arms crossed and glaring down at me. I withered under his gaze, ducking my head beneath my hands as though that would help somehow, but he could still see me. I couldn't hide from him, even if he could hide from me. I didn't know why that was, and it seemed kind of unfair.

"Jack," he said, "you suffered some serious damage in that crash. I've been doing absolutely everything I could to make you face up to the feelings you were suffering from that led to that crash so you could get out of here. I want it just as badly as you do."

I raised my head slowly and looked at him, still shivering slightly as my own face looked down upon me. Was he saying that he had actually been trying to _help_ me? How was that even possible? He'd been so cruel. I then glared at him and shakily stood to my feet. "Oh yeah? Then why didn't you bother telling me that I was suffering trauma from the crash? Don't you think that would have helped?"

He crossed his arms and irritably blew air out of the side of his mouth. "You really don't get it," he said, then he turned to look around him, caught sight of Amanda and looked at her sadly, then returned his gaze to me. "You can't just run from your mind, Jack. You had to figure out for yourself where you were and why you were here before I could help you leave. There was nothing I could do until you figured that out for yourself. You wouldn't have listened to a word I said otherwise. Heck, you're barely listening now as it is."

He was right. I was barely listening. It was really hard to listen to someone with the same face as yourself when all you wanted to do was punch that face in the nose and then continue beating that face to a bloody pulp until you ran out of energy and had to stop to catch your breath. I honestly couldn't think of a face I wanted to punch more right then, even though it meant punching my own face. Even if Chaos really was me, I believed I thoroughly deserved to be punched, and much more than that besides. If the punisher were to stop before I died, I would have deemed that person to be unreasonably merciful.

Chaos took a step toward me, leaning his head toward me so as to get my attention. "Alright, Jack, I want you to answer something for me: Why do you hate yourself so much?"

I jerked my head up and then started to flail a bit in the hopes of directing all suspicion of that accusation away from me, but I soon stopped as I realized that the flailing probably pegged Chaos as being absolutely right. Darn Chaos. I jutted my chin out defiantly. "What makes you think I hate myself?"

He shrugged, then scoffed a bit at my stupidity in trying to cover up a glaring wound that needed treating. He gestured toward me. "Isn't it obvious? You hate the fact that you've experienced intense trauma from being alone for three hundred years. You hate the fact that you have shadows in your mind. You hate the fact that despite trying to keep your mind light and zany, it still ends up being a terrifying place to be. You hate the fact that you're broken, Jack, and you therefore hate yourself for it. Why? Why is it so bad to be broken?"

I slumped down onto a nearby stairway as I covered my face with my hands to try and hide the tears that were prickling at my eyes. Why did he have to ask these horrible questions of me all of a sudden? Couldn't he just wave his magic wand and have us all be released? I thought we'd passed his final test. Did I really have to solve the mysteries of the universe to get out?

I sniffled, then decided to vocalize my own question. "Brent and Amanda… a-are they real?"

Chaos seemed to do a double take at this, though he recovered quickly. He probably half expected me to divert the topic. I was pretty predictable at times. "You haven't answered my question yet," he said.

"I need the answer to this question first," I said. "Are they real or are they not? I need to know."

He sighed and leaned against a wall. "What does that have to do with why you hate yourself? It's a completely different question."

"Because I can't think on that question until I know," I said. "Please just tell me. I really need to know."

There was a moment of silence as tension filled the air while Chaos pondered whether I deserved to know this yet or not. Or that was what I guessed, anyway. While I had connected with him quite a bit during the course of our adventure, I was still unable to read his thoughts, which was rather surprising if he was indeed me. Was there a part of myself I kept thoroughly hidden from the rest of myself?

"Fine," he said, and he started walking toward me. "Yes, they're real, but it's a long story and we need to-"

"Why are they here?" I said. "This is _my_ mind, isn't it? Why are they in _my_ mind?"

"You only said you needed the one question answered, not this one too."

"Please," I said. "I can't be at peace until I understand what happened." And I needed time to think on his question too, but I wasn't going to admit that out loud. It was a hard thing to admit to myself as it was, let alone admitting it to… myself? I kept forgetting that Chaos was really me. It seemed so unbelievable.

He sighed in resignation. "You just want a little time to think on my question, don't you? Alright, fine. I'll answer your question." My eyebrows shot up and I stared at him in shock for a moment, wondering how on Earth he had managed to discern that about my thoughts before it registered within me that while I couldn't read Chaos's thoughts, he could read mine. How was this possible? Why was that part of me so much more powerful than the part of myself I was conscious of?

He licked his lips in thought, then looked off toward Brent and Amanda. "Remember how you'd jumped in between the two cars to save them from the crash?" I nodded. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, obviously the crash happened anyway, and you were knocked unconscious along with the rest of them. Amanda's mother—s-she—" Chaos gulped, then regained his composure and continued, but in a whisper as he talked about Amanda's mother. "She died instantly. But the other two…"

"Obviously they didn't," I supplied, hoping to help him out a bit. He nodded, then continued once again.

"They were dying, but taking a little longer. You and your Guardian instincts—" He shook his head, looking somewhat amused at the situation. "You'd lost consciousness instantly, but could still wield magic for a time, and you grabbed a hold of both of their souls and held on tight as you were pulled down into your own mind. It was the only way you knew of to keep them alive until their bodies were stable again."

I jumped to my feet. "Wait, does that mean that their bodies are still alive out there?"

Chaos nodded slowly. "Yes," he said, "for now. But only for a little while longer. You've all been comatose for several weeks. The doctors are starting to lose hope and are talking about pulling the plug on the lot of you."

I squeaked and drew my hands up to my teeth, growing unsteady on my feet, yet unable to find a place to sit while in my present panicked condition. So this was what Jamie was talking about? This was why he was begging me to wake up now? Because he was worried that we would all run out of time to get out of here before the doctors pulled the plug on us? Was I connected to the same machines Brent and Amanda were? If I was, I could understand the doctors losing patience with me since they wouldn't likely understand this invisible comatose person that Jamie was talking to, but if I died right now, then both Brent and Amanda would go with me. I had to get out of here, and now.

"But how do you know all this?" I said, throwing my hands in his direction in a pleading gesture. "I've been unconscious this whole time, apparently. How could you possibly know any of this that I don't know?"

Chaos just rolled his eyes and sighed. "I'm your subconscious mind, Jack. I know everything about you. Everything that you've seen, heard, felt, or experienced, even if you've forgotten all about it, I have it filed away safely. I remember everything."

I let the reality of this sink in for several moments while I processed just how weird this situation was. I was speaking to my subconscious mind face to face. It was like we were two people, even though we really weren't. Slowly, the various tests and obstacles we'd had to face started to click as to why exactly they had happened. We had to learn to face our various fears and sorrows. We had to learn to see things from perspectives we'd never seen them before. And since this was the mind of the Guardian of Fun, we had to learn to see some fun through all of this hardship.

Another thought ran through my mind. Even being the all knowing subconscious mind of Jack Frost, there were some things that Chaos couldn't have possibly known, things about Brent's and Amanda's past that I wouldn't have even thought to guess at. I wondered at how that was possible until I remember when Pitch had invaded and started mucking things up with a power of his own. I lifted my eyes to Chaos, a resigned look in them. "You let Brent and Amanda have a lot of power of their own in my mind."

Chaos shrugged. "I didn't want them to go insane if I could help it. Heaven knows they were suffering enough as it was without making them unable to interact at all with their environment. They knew whenever they needed to do something fun, and I would whisper into their minds, telling them how to create exactly what they wanted to see. They did the rest."

I bowed my head, not wanting to look into the face of my double. This had not been the sort of person I had expected when I ran into Chaos personally and demanded answers from him as to what was going on. He was not supposed to be trying to help us. He was supposed to be mean and sadistic and… and… what? I was fishing for words, but was suddenly unable to find them. Chaos came and laid his hands on my shoulders, and for once I didn't flinch. Despite my fear and resistance to him, and despite his harsh methods, he had only been trying the entire time to be kind.

"Why did you try to paint yourself as a villain?" I asked.

He smirked slightly at that. "Would you have had me portray myself any other way?"

"Heh." He had me there. I probably would have preferred to see him as a villain when my life was literally falling to pieces around me than to see him as a benevolent entity bent on saving all our lives, a benevolent entity who was part of myself.

He continued. "If you had gotten comfortable in here, you might have given up on fighting to find your way out of here. I couldn't risk you guys getting too comfortable. Especially you, Jack. I almost lost you towards the last when you remembered what happened with Jamie. Thank god for Brent."

I looked up to him and smiled a weak little smile. "Heh, yeah," I said. "Brent's pretty cool like that."

He took this opportunity to make his face take on a serious tone once again, and I shuddered, knowing exactly where he was going to go next. Even if I couldn't read his mind like he could read mine, it didn't make him any less predictable. He and I were one and the same. "Now, Jack," he said, "About my question."

I sighed, resigning myself to my fate of having to answer this question, though I hated it with a passion. Wouldn't any other question do? Couldn't I just answer some other really tough question and ignore this one? From the look on Chaos's face, I would venture to guess that the answer to would be no. I took a deep breath, and answered.

"I just—I look at the people around me. All the people, especially the children, they're all growing and changing around me. They go through their own struggles, but they're always striving to become better and better people. And humans have such a short time to do it in, yet so many of them still succeed. Just look at Brent and Amanda." I gestured toward the two in question. "Brent was a skeptic just a few weeks ago, and now he's opened his heart to the magic that exists in the world. Amanda was naive, and now she's showing more of her true wisdom as she blossoms. And then there's me. I was a freak. I started out a freak, I'm still a freak, and I'll forever be a freak." I gripped at my hair. "I'm no good to anyone, and I never grow. That's why everyone's so mad at me all the time. I'm an eternal child. I never grow up, and I never will. The thought of growing up terrifies me, and yet I desperately want to at the same time, but I can't. I only ever regress. I never grow. Never."

I thought Chaos was going to respond to all that rambling with some sort of lecture or something. It made the most sense in light of all that I'd said, but he surprised me by just throwing his arms around me and holding me silently in a loving embrace for some time. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I just stood there in shock, not even knowing what was happening. I'd thought Chaos hated me. He sure got angry at me often enough. Why was he suddenly treating me so kindly?

He finally broke away from the hug and turned to Amanda. "Snowflake, could we borrow a little of your childish wisdom?" I don't think she understood what he was talking about with the way he'd worded his question, but she nodded anyway and came running up to meet us. He knelt down to her eye level and said, "Jack here thinks he hasn't grown up at all during the entire time he's been here. Think you could tell him if you've noticed any growth he's had?"

Amanda thought on this for a while, and I was worried that she wouldn't even comprehend the complexity of the question. She was really smart for her age, but she _was_ only six. Wasn't Chaos expecting a bit much out of her? Subconscious mind or not, he didn't know everything.

A few moments passed, and then Amanda shyly said, "He learned that he needed us."

Chaos smiled at Amanda and thanked her, then turned back to me and said, "Well?"

I simply shook my head bewilderedly. "But… what does that mean? I'm not sure I understand."

"Jack," he said, and he placed his hands on my shoulders again, forcing me to meet his gaze. "You've been through so much more than most people have ever gone through, yet no one knows about any of it. You've never been able to trust anyone else to see inside your heart, and so you suffer alone, unable to get the help you need to heal. But throughout this adventure into your mind, you've had to rely on Brent and Amanda for so much. You had to learn to trust, Jack. Trust is an important part of growing up."

I blinked at this new revelation, hardly able to believe my ears. "I-I'm growing up? Seriously? I can—I can do that?"

"Yes, you can, Jack." Chaos smiled. "And you're blossoming beautifully. You're a slow blooming blossom, but you are still unfolding your petals, one by one. There is no shame in that. Just keep growing. Your heart will tell you what to do. And I will always be here for you if you ever need me."

I suddenly panicked at the realization that I wasn't going to see Chaos again after I left this place. It was strange, since before this interaction, I'd wanted nothing to do with Chaos. Now I wanted everything to do with him. Was I crazy? "B-But… how will I find you if I need you?"

Chaos laughed, the first pure laugh I'd ever heard come from him. It melted my anxieties away as I realized the deep part of myself really was not a bad person. Amanda was absolutely right. Chaos was good deep down. He meant well, even if his actions weren't always appreciated. And he was just about to save all our lives if I could just get myself figured out enough to get myself out of here. "I'll be right here, Jack." He then touched my forehead. "Anytime you need me, just go into your mind. I'll be waiting for you there."

Amanda came running up then and started tugging at Chaos's sleeve. He turned and raised an eyebrow at her, but encouraged her to speak. "Does—Does this mean that you're not coming with us?"

He smiled again and shook his head. "My place is here, sweetheart. This is where I live. But don't you fret. You have a side to you who knows just as much about you as I know about Jack. All you have to do is go into your mind and see what you'll find there."

Amanda sighed and then buried her face in Chaos's hoodie. "I won't find my mommy there."

That wasn't what Chaos had expected her to say, and he blanched at the mention of her mother, then knelt down and hugged her. "Oh, snowflake. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I can't—I mean—I just—"

"I know," she said. "But it's okay. My mommy's not there, but she is here." She then pointed at her heart even as a couple tears slipped down her cheeks. "She'll always be here. Always."

Tears started leaking out of my eyes too, and I just let them come now that I realized I was in my mind and didn't have to let them freeze to my face. She knew what had happened. She actually knew. I couldn't figure out how she knew, but she did. How was such a young child so wise?

Chaos wiped away some tears of his own, then nodded at her and said, "That's exactly where she'll be. And she'll never leave you, no matter what." He then hugged Amanda very tightly, and she returned the gesture. Next thing I knew, I was roped into the hug, and soon Chaos pulled Brent in too. Perhaps Chaos just needed a good cry. Heaven knew he hadn't been allowed to cry in a long time, not with me not allowing myself to feel how broken I was. But perhaps it was okay once in a while. Amanda and Brent weren't mad at me for being broken, and maybe my other friends would understand if I actually let them see my emotional scars. It wasn't their fault that I'd never let them see.

Finally, Chaos let go, and we all stood up and looked at each other. He wiped one last tear out of his eye, then said, "Well… I guess this is goodbye." He then directed me to listen for Jamie's voice, and to follow that sound until I couldn't get any closer. I didn't entirely know how to follow a voice, but I closed my eyes and listened anyway.

"_Jack, please wake up. Please. Please wake up," he cried. "I'm so sorry I did this to you. Really, really sorry."_

I felt myself drift through different levels of consciousness as I simply listened and tried to do nothing else. I started to feel more grounded and less light and flighty, and the ethereal tone to Jamie's words gradually dissipated until all I heard was Jamie. And he no longer sounded like he was speaking from somewhere away up in the sky. In fact, it sounded like he was speaking into my right ear.

I took a deep breath. Then I took another one. Then I had a third. Finally, I worked up my courage to actually try to move a little, and my fingers twitched. My eyelids fluttered slightly, and I gradually opened my eyes.

Jamie's face came into focus over the course of several seconds, and I said, "…Jamie?" My voice was weak and raspy after several weeks of nonuse, but it had gotten the point across well enough.

"Jack!" He leapt from his seat beside the bed and threw his arms around my neck, nearly suffocating me in his enthusiasm. "Jack! I was worried you'd never wake up again, and that the last thing I would have ever said to you was that you ruined everything you touched, and… and…"

I grasped at the tentacles that were his arms around my neck and pried them free of me before he could kill me for real and held him just far enough away from me so that I could see his face. It was such a relief to finally see him again after several miserable weeks of trying and failing to find anything even remotely familiar. "Hey, kiddo, don't you worry about that. I heard you the entire time you were talking. It was your voice that brought me back." I smiled encouragingly, then booped his nose with my finger. "You wouldn't have sat by me and talked this entire time to a person who couldn't talk back if you didn't love me really deeply, right?"

Jamie nodded frantically, tears cascading down his face and making him unable to speak coherently. I felt for the boy and wished I could ease his pain, but I had no idea how to do so when his emotions were just overwhelmed at the moment. "I-I-I'll never stop believing again." The last word had dragged out a bit and sounded more like "aga-a-ain" in his agony at trying to speak.

I pulled him forward and held him tight. "I hope not," I said, "But I understand why you might flicker sometimes. It's just what happens when kids grow up. Even if they believe the rest of their lives, sometimes they just forget to believe for a moment, and they need to be reminded." I stroked his hair, hoping I was helping to reassure him at least somewhat. "I won't ever hold it against you if you flicker, Jamie. I admit I overreacted a bit this time, but I've learned not to take it so personally. It's a perfectly natural phase of life, and it doesn't mean you don't love me."

Jamie just continued hugging me wordlessly for a while, though not at all silently as his sobbing was loud enough to wake the dead at the moment. And perhaps it did, because as I came more to notice my immediate environment, I realized that I was not only in a hospital room in a bed, but that there were two beds on either side of me, and both of the occupants had just started moving.

"Oh, thank god!" said Brent to my left. "You're still here!" He sniffed and rubbed at his eye, acting like his eyes just itched, but I knew him better than that by now. "I was—I was worried that—"

"I know," I said. "But don't you worry. I'm still real, even out here."

"Jack?" I turned my attention to the other bed and saw a little Amanda slowly sitting up. I smiled at her, relieved that she was okay too. Jamie looked confusedly between me, Brent, and Amanda, no doubt wondering how they both knew me and were able to see me and wishing for an explanation. I figured I could explain it all later.

"Hey, Amanda," I said. "You okay?" She nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sunk back onto my pillow. We were okay. All of us. We'd all made it out of there safely. We actually did it. I could hardly believe it. That had to have been the biggest struggle of my entire life, and I had made it through. What couldn't I do if I could do that?

A few minutes later, the doors to the room banged open and a flood of people cascaded into the group, surrounding each bed and fussing over the occupants thereof. Nurses, doctors, worried family members who were relieved to see that their loved one had finally woken up, and in my case, the Guardians.

"Oh, Jack!" said Tooth as soon as she saw me, and she instantly pulled a Jamie and threw her arms around my neck. It seemed everyone was bent on suffocating me today. Hopefully I would live through it until they got it into their heads that that might not be the best way to approach a person just recovering from a coma. "We were all so worried! I'm so sorry for how I treated you. It wasn't fair to you and—"

"It's okay," I said. "I've come to peace with it." Seeing her disbelieving look, I laughed and nodded. "No, really. I have. The little voice in my head has a very loud mouth and wouldn't let me go until I'd heard him out."

"What kind of gobbledygook are ya spewing out now, Frostbite?" I turned to see a very worried, but strangely relieved Bunny, sadness evident in his eyes, but relief overwhelming the sadness. I chuckled at his question and shook my head. I had no idea how to explain anything. It was all too weird. It was even hard for me to process, let alone for anyone who hadn't actually been there to experience it firsthand.

"I um… I thought you might like to have this," he said, and he then placed something in my hand. I looked down and saw that he'd placed the snowflake egg in my hand. I picked it up and stared at it, then looked up at him in awe, not knowing what to say, but understanding the gesture completely. It was his way of apologizing to me.

Bunny then stepped back and allowed North to come up close to me. He sighed, looking sad himself, though also relieved at my recovery. "I removed you from naughty list," he said. "And put myself on it." If my jaw had dropped open any further, it would have detached from its joints and hit the ground. North put himself on the naughty list? Since when does he ever do that?

Seeing my surprised expression, he rubbed the back of his neck and said, "We were all naughty. All except you. You remind us how children are, and we forget you are child. We cannot be Guardians of Childhood if we forget children are children. Please forgive us."

"Of course!" I bolted up to a sitting position in bed and immediately regretted it, as dizziness washed over me and made me fall back onto my pillow. It would take a while for me to recover fully, but at least the biggest hurdle was over now. "People do stupid things sometimes, right?"

At this, Sandy nodded his response, then put forth both his hands to show them to me and let me clearly see them, then he took both of his hands and slapped one cheek, then the other. I threw my hand out to him in the hopes of stopping him, but I couldn't reach while I was still lying down. "Aw, Sandy, don't do that!" He just shrugged and shook his head, clearly thinking he had to do that. Well, at least he was done punishing himself now. All of the Guardians had apologized in their own way, and so had Jamie. Hopefully we could all just go back to being friends now rather than having them all hanging their heads like puppies after they'd been chastised.

An unexpected voice cleared his throat to the right of my bed, and I looked over to see an elderly man staring at me. That's right, _at_ me. I stared back in silence for a moment before hesitantly saying, "You can see me?"

"I can," he said. "Amanda told me all about what happened."

"Oh." I self consciously tucked my legs up closer to my body. "Then you must know about how I-"

"Don't blame yourself for the snow storm, Jack," he said. "You never intended to do anything malicious, as you made evident by putting yourself at risk to save my little granddaughter. Nature is cruel. But I wanted to thank you for being a part of nature who tries to minimize the threat to others as much as you can, even if you have to lay your own life on the line to do it. You're a great man, Jack. I'm glad my little Amanda found herself in such capable hands as yours."

My jaw dropped open again as I struggled for words to say. "But I—I didn't—"

Tooth's hand made its way to my shoulder and she tapped it to get my attention. "Just accept the compliment, Jack. You really did put a lot at risk just to keep these two safe."

"But my negligence nearly cost them their lives!"

"No," said Tooth, "our negligence nearly cost you yours. Don't blame yourself for that." She then threw her arms around me again.

"Your sister's right," said the man, and he gestured to Tooth as I looked between them in shock to realize he could see her too. And that he'd called her my sister. We didn't look that similar, did we? "You have a dangerous job. It's just one of the hazards of being the bringer of winter. But you care about the people you bring winter to and will put their safety over your own, and that's the kind of role model I want my granddaughter to have in her life. Will you do me the honor of coming over for dinner once you're all recovered?" He then turned his gaze to Brent. "You can come too. She tells me that you helped a lot as well. Kept Jack sane, apparently."

"That's me, the sane-keeper," said Brent, rolling his eyes and laughing at his wit. "I'll be there."

Everyone was watching me and waiting for me to answer, but I was too busy being shocked to even think straight. Nobody blamed me for what had happened? Not even a little? I just couldn't comprehend it. "But… what's going to happen to Amanda? Her mother—"

"I'll be taking her in for now," he said. "I'm her Pop Pop. I'll be able to give her what she needs. Except, perhaps, for the empathy she'll need to recover from this. Which I'm really hoping you'll provide."

I stared in silence for a moment more, thinking over my words carefully, before I nodded at him and said, "I will." Then a moment later added, "I'll be there for dinner too."

"Good," he said, then patted me on the knee. "You all get some rest. You've been through quite the ordeal. But thank you for not leaving my little girl alone. I can't thank you enough for that." He then smiled one last time at me and left. One by one, all the Guardians followed suit, wishing me well and then leaving me alone so I could rest. The doctor came in and checked on us, and I was surprised to find that he could see me too. The other Guardians must have known exactly who they could take me to so I could get cared for properly when I was connected on a very deep level to the lives of two humans.

The feeling of fingers running through my hair brought my attention back to Jamie, who had not left yet, and seemed reluctant to do so, but I knew he had to get back to his life while he waited for me to recover fully, and I was sure he knew as well. I took his hand and gripped it in my own. "I'll be okay now, Jamie. Your love pulled me through. Thank you for that."

He hugged me one more time before standing up, looking torn between going and staying, and then he rubbed my hair one more time while singing his song again.

"I'll love you forever,  
I'll like you for always,  
As long as I'm living,  
My Guardian you'll be."

A tear rolled down my cheek and froze there, but I didn't care. I pulled Jamie into a huge hug of my own and then said, "Remember how that book ends? With the tables turning?"

"Yeah?" said Jamie. "What about it?"

I then stroked Jamie's hair in return and repeated his tune back at him as he choked up a couple times over it. But I think it finally sunk home that I honestly forgave him and that I loved him dearly and would never stop.

Jamie then got up and waved goodbye and wished us all well as we recovered, and Brent and Amanda promptly fell asleep, catching up on much needed real sleep this time instead of the phony version they'd been experiencing the past few weeks. Heaven knew we all needed it.

I sighed as I drifted off into my own dreamland, finally feeling the touch of sleep as it was supposed to be felt, a gentle healing caress, as the words of the song I'd sung to Jamie floated their way into my subconscious, where Chaos was waiting to take the new version and smile as he filed it away for later use, knowing with a smirk that I might need to surprise Jamie with it later in order to drive the point home.

"I'll love you forever,  
I'll like you for always,  
As long as I'm living,  
My Jamie you'll be."

_**Whoo! Done! Wow... now I have to go and reevaluate my life and figure out what to do with myself now that there's no more Pineapple to keep me occupied, haha.**_

_**Anyway, you might all be interested to know that I'm trying to come up with a sequel. Anyone who wants to be notified of this should follow me on Author Alert. I welcome suggestions for the sequel too, as a number of plot points aren't making sense yet, and I tend to need to know roughly where I'm going before I start if I'm to get all the way through a story. Suggestion are extremely welcome, haha.**_

_**I'm also interested in getting some cover art for this story, but would rather not draw something myself if I can avoid it. Would any of you like to draw for me? I'm open to a lot of ideas and art styles. Just talk to me and I'm sure we can work something out. :)**_

_**Phew! This story was... well, intense for me to write. It was a pretty accurate depiction of how my own mind works, haha. Hard to write. But still, I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for seeing this through with me, and I hope to see you around again on either the sequel or one of my other stories!**_

_**Take care, everyone! You've all been wonderful! :)**_


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